


mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map

by storytellingape



Category: A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Tracks (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Anachronisms, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Animal Death, Awkward Romance, Car Accidents, Coming of Age, Film References, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kylux Adjacent Ship, Light Angst, M/M, References to Literature, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:43:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: Henry Beard is at a crossroads, caught between law school and the temptation of starting a humor magazine with his best friend Doug. To complicate things further there's Rick Smolan: hitchhiker, suspected hippie, and nature enthusiast.





	mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chifuyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chifuyu/gifts).



> The characters portrayed in this fic are fictional accounts of their real-life selves and based solely on the performances of AD and DG. Bits of backstory were embellished but I tried my best to keep it 'accurate'. Henry Beard is from [A Futile and Stupid Gesture](https://youtu.be/bjYLFbGN9hk) whereas Rick Smolan is from [Tracks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRHmBFOl2aM). 
> 
> The fic is set several years before the start of either those movies before Henry and Rick's careers took off. I also played a bit with the ages.
> 
> I haven't written anything in a long time so it's a bit nerve-wracking to post this. I also don't live in the US and just googled the places mentioned here, writing this fic under the assumption Henry was a bad driver and refused to follow a map lol. There are probably several anachronisms, like the cassette system in a 1960's Maserati but I realized too late when the whole thing was already written! ;_; 
> 
> Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy lol!

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m leaving,” Henry told Doug on the phone. “So I can’t go to lunch tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Doug said carefully.

Henry sighed. He glanced at his bed, at all the things he’d packed for his trip, stuffed neatly inside two duffel bags with his initials stitched onto the leather. A backpack would have been more appropriate but he was twenty-three and didn’t own one. 

Doug cleared his throat a couple of times. “I guess this is the part where I wish you good luck,” he said.

“Thanks,” Henry said dryly.

“I mean it,” Doug intoned. “I guess I’ll see you soon?”

“Soon,” Henry repeated. “Goodbye.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

He went west. 

It was always west in the stories, the good ones at least, and everybody knew west was the direction of freedom. There was nothing for him east. East was New England, New York, all these places he’d already been that he was trying to escape. Home used to be New York for him but that hadn’t been true for a long time and he hadn’t been home in years after getting accepted into Harvard. He didn’t have much going for him there anyhow and his old life now seemed like a distant memory, fading fast day by day. Bleak to even think about, catching him with a grief that surprises him at times with its heft.

The road went ever on and on. That was the beautiful part. Driving unfamiliar roads while the sky drained to milky hues, the static hiss of the radio his only company. It was comforting to not have to think, because to keep going was the only goal. He had a map and a bag of clothes. Well, actually, he had two bags of clothes because he hated doing laundry. He had money too, that was important, and the vaguest _vaguest_ plan. It didn’t matter where he was going, only that he never stopped driving. 

The world was his oyster. Or how ever that saying went. Henry never read Kerouac because he always thought he was a pretentious bastard, but he had once hollowed out a hardback copy of Ginsberg so he had a place to store his weed. _I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape myself_ had been written on the very last page he’d torn off, smudged by a thumbprint that looked suspiciously like Doug’s.

Doug.

Henry was escaping him too. It was the end of an era, and law school was beckoning. He still had eight weeks to make up his mind. So he took his father’s car and drove.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

He had to stop eventually due to the limitations of the human body. 

In Virginia, the air damp with a light mist, Henry checked himself into a motel with the nastiest drapes in all fifty states. There wasn’t any room service, not that he was expecting it, but there was plenty of hot water and the bed looked clean enough despite the floral bedding. A brown stain marred the corner of the ceiling but he tried not to let it bother him. He ate his dinner in front of the TV — a greasy cheese burger with pickles but with all the pickles taken out — with one eye to the door. 

Doug had always called him overly cautious. This was due in part to Henry’s upbringing: his mother was both an alcoholic and a socialite, the darling of upper East Side gossip. Henry didn’t know his father well enough to make any assumptions about him but knew that he was a very secretive man. Some of Henry’s earliest memories consisted of trying to sneak into his father’s study to rifle through his things. Most times he was successful; other times, he got his ears boxed. He learned to keep to himself at an early age. Books were a wonderful distraction. Writing his own stories, after that, became a comfort.

That night he slept like the dead. 

It was sleep like he’d never known it, the sleep of the road-weary, devoid of any dreams. In the morning he showered again before checking himself out, filling up the gas tank and taking his coffee to go. He drove eight hours until sundown, stopping intermittently to grab some food and stretch his legs. The food all tasted the same anywhere he went: the meat had the consistency of bubble gum, the fries were always too greasy, the ketchup runny. The coffee was consistently shit. 

Henry flipped between radio channels playing Christian rock and folk music. He listened to a lot of political radio and when he couldn’t snort hard enough at some of the stuff being said without getting a nasal congestion, he played some Bob Dylan. There was a cassette tape stuck to the deck that had been there god knows how long. He drove for two days straight, the words to _Like A Rolling Stone_ perfectly memorized by the end of it.

At some point, he needed to sleep. The body was important. He stopped at a gas station that had a connecting motel. There were a lot of them on the highway, some in better condition than others, most of them probably safe but Henry had watched _Psycho_ far too many times to be fooled by appearances. An erratically flickering neon sign lit the parking lot, bathing the wet gravel in eerie flashes. Henry parked first then headed to the front desk where a woman was watching _I Dream of Jeannie_ and stuffing her mouth full with pork rinds. She had round glasses and a bad perm. She didn’t even look up when Henry entered or when he rang the bell. Twice.

“Excuse me,” Henry said. The sound of his own voice surprised him, until he realized he hadn’t talked to anyone in two days. Henry tried the bell again. Nothing. Not even a blink. The woman didn’t budge. On TV, the laugh track sounded. Then the door behind Henry chimed noisily, announcing the presence of a visitor: a guy in a maroon t-shirt with a heavy-looking camera slung around his neck trudged in, a backpack strapped over one shoulder and his boots tracking flecks of dried mud across the floor. They were badly scuffed and run down at the heels. Henry glanced at his own footwear which were a little worn in but still in great condition, considering the amount of money he had paid for them. They were genuine calfskin leather, not ideal for driving long-distance. He had taken to driving in just his socks for the last ten miles after the discomfort materialized.

“Hi, can I get a room?” the guy said, leaning over the counter and ringing the bell only once. The woman glanced up _finally_ and then got up with a grumble. 

“We only have one vacancy left,” she said, her words clipped by a distinct Eastern European accent. She threw a pointed look in Henry’s direction before flipping open a log book and licking the tip of her pen, a habit Henry knew all too well. “Twenty-one dollars, cash. No credit.” She jerked her head to a sign that said exactly that: _cash, no credit._

The guy gave her a disbelieving look before taking out his wallet.

“What do you mean there are no vacancies left?” Henry interrupted. “I’ve literally been standing here for ten minutes, waiting for you to pay attention to me, and you’re giving _him_ the room? What kind of establishment is this?”

The woman stared at him before shrugging. “Not the Ritz, that’s for sure,” she said, then counted the guy’s money — two fives and eleven crumpled up one-dollar bills — before handing him a key. The guy at least had the decency to spare Henry a commiserating smile.

Henry balled his hands into fists and resisted the urge to ring the bell repeatedly. In the end, he stormed out and bought dinner from the connecting bar. He wasn’t like Doug who was prone to sudden outbursts; he was the exact opposite: keeping it all bottled up inside himself until he couldn’t anymore, after which he did a number of stupid things like steal his father’s car and drive out west with no clear goal in mind. They were serving chicken wings tonight, which wasn’t half-bad after a steady diet of candy and soda. Henry was hunched over his wings, ignoring the looks some of the men were throwing at him, when a shadow loomed above him. It was the guy from earlier. _The room thief._ Henry wiped his lips primly with a paper napkin and raised his eyebrows. 

“May I help you?”

“I honestly feel kind of bad about the whole room thing,” said the guy without preamble. He slid into the empty seat across from Henry and spread his hands out in a peaceable gesture. They were big hands, Henry noted. He had a bandaid wrapped around his right thumb. “I’m Rick, by the way.”

“Henry.”

They shook hands. Henry took a long swallow of his beer, thumbing droplets of condensation from the neck. When Henry caught his eye, glancing up, Rick grinned brilliantly at him. He probably thought he was being charming. 

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Rick asked, as if he already knew the answer.

Henry shrugged. He glanced around; Rick had a point. The men thronging the bar and hovering by the pool table all wore flannel and sported beer bellies and they were hardened in ways Henry could never really fathom. None of them wore a fucking cashmere turtleneck in June. 

“I could say the same for you,” Henry pointed out and made a show of giving Rick a once-over: jeans, and the same t-shirt from earlier, only now he wasn’t lugging around his camera and backpack. He looked deceptively normal, like the kind of guy who would help you do your taxes or change your tires if he ever caught you stranded on the side of the highway. His hair was a bedraggled mess, his face rough with the whiskery beginnings of a mustache and beard. 

Henry eyed him speculatively from above the rim of his beer bottle. 

“I’m a bit of a nomad, a traveler, if you will,” Rick said.

“Right.” Henry coughed. So the guy was a hippie.

“And before you say anything else, no, I’m not a hippie,” Rick laughed. “I get that a lot. I have no idea why.I just like going places, you know? There’s so much of the world to see, not enough time. Do you ever feel like that? Like you’re running out of time?”

“Sure,” Henry said, already thinking about ways to get out of this conversation. He hated talking to strangers. And this one seemed particularly chatty.

“So what brings you here?” Rick asked conversationally. He twirled the menu between his hands and squinted at the name printed in front in sweeping blue letters. “To Kiki’s Diner, _home of the best shrimp and grits this side of South Carolina_.” He huffed a short laugh and folded the menu.

So it was going to be that kind of night then. Henry sighed and settled in. His beer was getting warm, and so was he, though that could be attributed mainly to his choice of clothing. “Have you ever read Kerouac?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Rick shrugged.

“Of course not.”

“I mean, I’m not illiterate or anything, it’s just not my thing.”

“He has this book, you see, it’s a very popular book,” Henry told him, “but it’s full of shit. It’s called _On the Road._ You’ve probably heard of it. I mean, everyone has. Anyway, Kerouac was lauded as some sort of literary genius when all the book was ever about was driving across America, having a lot of sex and getting high.”

“ _Ah_ ,” Rick said knowingly, steepling his hands in front of his face. His lip quirked up. “So you’re a writer.”

Henry tilted his head at him. “How could you tell?”

“Just a hunch,” Rick said. Then he smiled.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Rick offered to share the room. It was close to midnight when they called it a day, at which point Henry had shredded enough paper napkins to create a small mountain of them on the table and he was softened by alcohol enough to allow himself to be lured in by Rick’s drunk, sleepy eyes.

Henry didn’t trust him, and he still didn’t trust him after Rick let him into his room and offered him the spare bath towel. The towel was coarse but free of any odors or stains which was wonderful in a strange way. Henry took his bag with him into the bathroom, setting his bath kit down on the sink. There was hardly any elbow room and he didn’t feel safe touching the floor with his bare feet so he showered quickly, scrubbing grit and dust out of his hair with one of the free shampoos that left his hair feeling brittle. Afterwards, he dressed in pyjamas and threw a robe on. Just because he was on the road didn’t mean he would let go of small comforts, which included his bedroom slippers and his pipe. He wasn’t some charlatan. He still had some class.

When he emerged from the shower fifteen minutes later, Rick was still sitting cross-legged on the bed just as he’d left him, his shorts hiked up higher than Henry was comfortable. There were polaroids fanned across the bed in a half-circle, and he had one pressed thoughtfully between his lips. His glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose. His hair hung in front of his face. He had a striking profile, Henry thought. He also needed a shower: there were visible pit stains on his shirt.

“Hey,” Rick said, voice muffled, without looking up. Then he did look up, and he blinked. “Uh,” he said eloquently. “Nice robe you got there.”

Henry shrugged and sucked briefly on his pipe. It was a bad habit, he knew, but better than gnashing his teeth. He’d been a worrier, as a child, riddled with small anxieties. His nanny often complained of biting. “Thanks,” he said, then stood there dumbly by the bathroom door for a little while. Rick huffed and scooped up his polaroids before dumping them all into his open duffel by the bed. He grabbed his own bathroom towel which hung from a hook behind the door.

“You know, I’m not a killer of children or anything,” he told Henry, in a voice he probably thought was reassuring but was a pitch too loud. Drunk, he had little volume control, and tended to stare too long and intently, like he was doing now at Henry’s pipe. “I thought I was just doing the good thing by offering to share the room. And you seemed nice.”

“How do you know I’m not a psychopath who’ll murder you in your sleep?” Henry asked, genuinely curious. 

“You’re wearing a bathrobe,” Rick observed, and he let his eyes wander up and down the length of Henry before pausing to stare at his face. “With your initials stenciled on the pocket.”

“So?”

Rick shrugged, just one shoulder. “It’d be a shame if you turned out to be a murderer. You seem like you have no aptitude for it.”

“Well,” Henry said, “Looks can be deceiving Mr. Smolan.”

Henry burst out laughing, clapping Henry on the shoulder as he lumbered past him to the bathroom. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m gonna have to find out, aren’t I? It’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Then he added, “Don’t make me regret it.” And shut the door right as Henry had come up with a witty reply.

Rick took longer in the shower than Henry was expecting. Henry had dried his hair, paced the length of the bedroom, chewed a bit of tobacco to calm himself,paced some more and he still hadn’t finished. He checked his watch: 1:15 in the morning. He peered through the drapes, squinting through the blue haze covering everything outside. He could hear the occasional rumble of trucks driving past on the highway, nothing else. He lay on one side of the bed with his back to the wall, facing the bathroom door, and hugged his bag tightly to his chest. He didn’t mean to fall asleep but as he soon as he closed his eyes, he was unconscious almost instantly. When he woke, it was already dawn: light outside was creeping in and enveloping the room in a soft dreamlike glow. He was slow to wake, working out the kinks in his neck, until he realized his bag was missing and so was Rick. _Rick, Rick._ Then he really started to panic, his heart beating a scar in his ribcage as he leapt to his feet and threw the door open. It hit the wall with a rattle. Shit, he thought. Shit, shit shit shit —

Henry was halfway down the gravel lot when he heard a whistle behind him. _Rick_.

Rick was right there on the patio, one leg crossed over his knee, drinking coffee. His shirt was as rumpled as his hair. In his right hand he clutched a familiar dogeared copy of _Bored of the Rings._ He seemed to be halfway through it. Henry wasn’t sure whether he was angry or relieved to find he hadn’t robbed him in his sleep and fled. He still didn’t trust him. But it was too early to throw a fit, and anyway he had never been a fan of them.

“Fell out of your bag,” Rick explained, holding the book aloft and looking sheepish. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s actually pretty funny. I never pegged you for a funny guy. You look — a little serious. With your pipe and your turtleneck and your hair and — all that.” 

Henry just blinked at him. What did his hair have to do with anything? His heart rate was normalizing but he had a hard time processing any of what Rick was saying. Everything at this hour was just white noise.

“Henry,” Rick said. “Henry, hey, hey, you look a little spooked. You all right?”

Rick chucked the book aside, climbed up to his feet. He was in shorts and flip-flops but he was still imposing. He padded over to Henry, peering into his face. For a moment he looked like he wanted to touch him, but then thought better of it and kept his hands to himself; they flopped uselessly at his sides though he kept looking at Henry intently.

“The bar has a breakfast menu if you can believe that. We could grab something to eat before we hit the road. I mean, after you get some proper footwear.” He pointed to Henry’s feet.

Henry curled and uncurled his bare toes on the ground. He didn’t even notice. He went to fetch his bedroom slippers, feeling around for them under the bed until he found them lying side by side by the door where Rick must have relocated them, along with his duffel bag. He did a cursory check of his belongings — wallet, his father’s watch, the saline solution for his contact lenses, his writing notebook, a bag of half-eaten chips — and nothing important seemed to be missing. He was almost ashamed for being suspicious of Rick but he told himself he was just being practical. It was nothing against Rick; Henry was sure he was a nice guy. Still: nice guys were capable of anything, same as anyone. It didn’t hurt to be cautious. His father always said to be wary of the good ones. That was what drew Henry to Doug in the first place. He may be a narcissist but at least you knew what you were getting upfront. And if Henry was ever hurt by his callousness, his inability to commit and do his fair share of the grunt work, then Henry had no one to blame but himself.

As promised, Rick was waiting for him at the bar. He was seated in the same booth as last night, which, in the light of the morning, seemed actually quaint. Henry never noticed it last night but the stools flanking the bar were chrome-topped and cherry red, matching the vinyl booths; the floor was a shiny checkered linoleum. On the walls were license plates from different states: Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, all these places Henry had never been because he spent most of his life tucked away east, studying, reading, writing cheap knock-knock jokes, and not really living. It was too early to feel maudlin so he quickly cut that line of thought short.

Rick had already ordered for himself. A waitress came over with a notebook and pen and asked Henry what he wanted. “Coffee,” he said, “No sugar. Do you have deviled eggs?”

“What now?”

“Never mind,” Henry waved his hand in a vague gesture. “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

“So that’s pancakes, three eggs, bacon and hash — do you want your bacon extra crispy?”

“I have no opinion on bacon,” Henry said.

She blinked at him, then glanced worriedly at Rick.

“He’ll take them crispy. Thanks Janine,” Rick grinned. She nodded, looking relieved, before sauntering away after pouring Henry coffee.

“I didn’t know her name was Janine.”

Rick pretended to peruse the menu. “Well, that’s what it says on her name tag.”

Henry coughed, flushing. He didn’t want to seem rude. He wasn’t, but Rick didn’t know that, and he was starting to give off a bad impression. “Sorry,” he said when the silence dragged on.

Rick shrugged. Their food arrived piping hot and they ate mostly without talking, watching birds fight for food outside in the empty lot. Henry didn’t mind. The less talk, the better; he was leaving soon anyway, never seeing Rick again, what difference did it make if they had amiable small talk. After breakfast, Henry paid Rick back for the room and they dressed quietly with their backs turned to each other like it was a high school locker room. Henry finished first, and caught, just as he was turning, a brief glimpse of Rick’s back: broad and flecked with sunburn before he pulled a shirt over it in one smooth motion. Henry said nothing and picked up his watch from the nightstand. 

“I guess I’ll see you around,” Rick said, patting the roof of Henry’s car once Henry was strapped in.

Henry adjusted the rearview mirror. “I guess.” 

Rick nodded. “Good luck on… whatever it is you’re trying to do,” he said, then he turned and started walking away. Henry watched him become a smaller and smallerdot in the rearview mirror, before starting the engine. He was nosing out of the parking lot when he heard a solid thump on the passenger door. Rick again, gesturing for him to roll down the window. Henry slowed down to a stop.

“Look,” Rick said, squinting and pushing hisglasses up his nose. “I don’t have a car; I sold it so I could buy myself a nice camera. I’ve been hitching a ride since Maryland and frankly I’m sick of worrying whether or not the next good samaritan will be responsible for my murder. Henry, I think it’d be in your best interest to take me with you. Driving alone can’t be fun, all that road and no one to talk to. You said you were going west.”

“West, as in a _concept_ ,” Henry argued, in case there were any misunderstandings. It wasn’t like he had any specific place in mind. It sounded good on paper, in fiction: like a pioneer looking for promised homestead. West. But he didn’t mean California or god forbid, Oregon.

Rick continued to look at him expectantly.

“You want to come with me,” Henry deadpanned.

“Sure,” Rick said. 

“You want to eat shitty diner food and sleep wherever I feel like sleeping and listen to eight hours of political radio.”

“Doesn’t seem too bad,” Rick laughed. “I mean, it’s just eight hours and I may even pick up a few things. Right?”

He probably thought he was being funny. Henry tamped down the urge to return his smile. 

“Look, I’ll even pay for gas,” Rick offered, raising his eyebrows hopefully. “You can still write your book. I’m here for the experience. I’m not trying to con you or anything, and I don’t have some hidden nefarious agenda. You can trust me. Do you wanna see my driver’s license?”

Henry regarded him suspiciously. He couldn’t remember ever telling Rick about the book but he tended to get a little loose-lipped when he had one too many so maybe he’d spilled the beans last night. He had two aspirin over breakfast but it would be a while before the effects kicked in. He massaged the ache behind his eyelids and sighed. He held out his palm; Rick slipped his driver’s license into it. He looked a few years younger in his photo, pouty and with his hair long in front, half shrouding his face. His license said he was from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was only twenty one years old, a couple of years younger than Henry. 

“Are you sure you’re not a hippie?”

Rick made a solemn gesture, giving him his coolest, most sincere stare. “Cross my heart.”

Henry rolled his eyes, shook his head. He handed him back his license. He was weak; he could almost hear Doug taunting him for it. _Weak, Henry. So weak for every pretty face you meet_. He shook his head again. Even here, Doug haunted his thoughts. It was rather annoying. He should probably call him, tell him he was still alive, and not lying dead in a ditch somewhere. 

Maybe later. There wasn’t any rush. He had all the time in the world, here in this strange place where his future lay in stasis, waiting, waiting, for him to make a move. 

Henry reached over to unlock the passenger door. He hoped to god he wouldn’t regret it as he could already think of half a dozen ways Rick could kill him in his sleep. “Get in,” he grumped, “Driver gets to pick the music; absolutely no taking off your shoes. Those are the rules. And there’ll be no talking unless I say so.”

“My lips are sealed,” Rick said, tossing his stuff into the backseat before reaching over for a moment to rifle through his things. He pulled out a camera — a different one this time, a polaroid, which he held up to his face just as Henry was backing out of the parking lot and scrunching up his face against a beam of sun. “Hold that,” Rick said, and clicked the shutter. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

They took turns driving. After making good on his promise and paying for gas, Rick offered to drive the last five miles to Georgia. There was a light rain rolling in, darkening the clouds. Henry had been driving the last four hours, and his eyes kept blinking and slipping shut, blinking and slipping shut again so it was a welcome reprieve to be on the passenger seat for a change. He fell asleep immediately, amidst protests that he didn’t have a headache, slumped against the window and breathing a fog of condensation onto the glass. 

The highway churned gently underneath them, the songs on the stereo shifting from country to jazz then country again, Rick belting songs, off-key.

When Henry drove, he was careful to obey the speed limit but Rick was different: he drove confidently, his jaw set in concentration, his mouth thinned to a serious line. Henry slouched in his seat and listened to the rhythmic hum of the engine, the ever-present noise of movement, the crinkling of food wrappers, each sigh and sniff, acutely aware of the steady warmth of Rick’s presence in the drive seat.

When he woke, the rain was coming down in sheets. There was barely any visibility. Headlights of passing cars cut through the rain like glass and Rick was hunched over the steering wheel, his eyebrows furrowed, as he tried making sense of the road. Henry wiped his mouth against the back of his hand and smacked his lips, moving around to uncurl himself from the human ball he’d folded himself into. His roommate in freshman year used to give him shit for that, said he slept like a baby, lying on his side, with his fists curled against his face. He hadn’t realized until later into the second semester how true that had been. Doug had taken a picture, kept it because he thought Henry looked sweet but also so he could blackmail Henry into doing his bidding, as if Henry wasn’t already bending to his every whim. 

“You’re awake,” Rick noted, sounding surprised. “You were asleep a while.”

Henry checked the time on the dashboard. He slept two hours. It was close to dinner time; that explained the sudden pangs of hunger. The last thing he’d eaten were gummy bears and licorice sticks. In the distance, he could almost make out the promising glint of civilization. He popped a crick in his neck. The ache was getting worse and worse: sleeping in shitty motels was exacerbating it and building tension in his shoulders. It was probably a pinched nerve.

Henry yawned and glanced out the window. He had no idea where they were, but he trusted Rick to some extent that he wouldn’t take him to his death. They were entering Dahlonega, wine country, or so the sign that greeted them said. Dahlonegawas a small town, which Henry was sure to appreciate if it weren’t raining buckets and the wind wasn’t whipping everything into a frenzy, including his hair. Rick parked the car in front of Connie’s Sandwiches & Ice Cream. Nothing special: it just happened to be the first place they came across that served food. 

The benches outside were flooded with water but inside it was nice and dry. _Homey_. Rick had raced Henry to the striped awning and Henry had almost slipped because he was wearing leather shoes. He wiped them on the rug, making sure he wasn’t leaving a trail of wet foot prints inside.

The server arrived as soon as they settled into a booth. She looked like a Connie, red lipstick, short white hair, busty and overly friendly. There was a jukebox in the corner, playing something too soft for Henry to make out but that sounded familiar enough. 

“What can I get you boys?” Connie said, flipping open her notebook. It was the same notebook everywhere, Henry noticed. He wondered if it was a metaphor. 

Rick and Henry looked at each other before each grabbing a menu. Henry wanted a salad but they didn’t have it so he settled for chicken pot pie and a diet coke. Rick ordered a burger with a side of fries, some coffee and then they sat in relative silence, Rick glancing around the place and leaned comfortably against the booth, his arms spread out. There were twin spots of moisture on his glasses. He didn’t seem all that bothered by them. 

“Have you ever been here?”

Henry looked away from the courtyard. There were two lovers outside, laughing, shrieking in the rain, sharing an umbrella buoyed haphazardly by the wind. Or maybe they weren’t lovers; looks can be deceiving. “You mean in Georgia?” 

Rick nodded.

“I don’t travel often,” Henry said. “When I was a kid, I used to get carsick a lot. And plane travel made me anxious so my parents couldn’t take me anywhere. I grew out of it eventually but by the time I had, it was too late to develop a taste for traveling. So I stayed put. I grew up in New York. Went to school in Massachusetts. In this little school called Harvard. I never thought of leaving.” 

Until now, Henry didn’t say. 

Rick was quiet, like he was listening, waiting for his turn to speak. His eyes were intent on Henry’s face. “I’ve been to Atlanta a couple of times. My dad took me to the casinos when I was a kid — no, not like that! Well, kind of like that. He had friends here. And a gambling problem. He bought me my first camera with the money he made from hitting the slot machines. Of course, it was just a cheap camera, the kind you could probably get from a department store, but it made all the difference to me.”

“So you’re a photographer, are you?” Henry asked. He’d already suspected. Rick had two cameras with him, and he constantly stopped the car to take a picture of the scenery: the highway, the sky, the endless stretch of road. A few times he’d taken Henry’s picture without permission, once while he was driving, another time as he was puffing his pipe, deep in thought, slouched in the passenger seat. Henry didn’t know whether it was annoying or interesting. He half suspected Rick took pictures of him sleeping. At some point, it had to stop, but it seemed to fill Rick with a kind of childish giddiness that made Henry feel guilty for wanting to throw his camera out the window.

“I’d like to be a photographer,” Rick laughed. “I’m not yet. Not professionally, anyway. I’m just a man with a hobby.”

He shrugged, and said nothing more about it until their food arrived and they sunk into meaningless chatter. Henry wished he’d brought a book with him. He had a couple sitting in the glove compartment: _Catch-22_ and _The Hobbit,_ dogeared beyond recognition. Henry liked to read in public to keep people from approaching him, weaving through meaningless smalltalk and dodging social interaction like shrapnel. It was the best defense. If the pipe wasn’t already a deterrent. But he found that the more Rick talked, the more Henry wanted to listen to him. Rick wasn’t an idiot, despite the unfortunate appearance, despite the shorts. He talked about traveling and his dreams for the future; he talked about home existing only in the mind, how it was something you never leave behind but carried with you from place to place. Henry hummed and made all the right comments, and thought: home. He should really call home.

The rain abated after Rick’s second coffee. Connie pointed them to a three-star inn across town run by her sister-in-law. It was nicer than any of the places Henry had stayed in in the last few days, but it was nothing stellar, maybe just worth two stars. The furniture was all blond wood, the wallpaper floral, matching the bedding. There was a painting above the dresser of a pastoral landscape: a replica of Isaac Levitan’s _Golden Autumn_. Henry tried not to stare too hard _._

He grew up in a hotel so he had high expectations of the hospitality industry where every star must be earned. At least the bed was comfortable and they got separate rooms this time which meant uninterrupted privacy. Henry showered leisurely, taking his sweet time lathering his hair and making use of the hot water. After, he sat naked in his robe and switched on the TV. 

Then he lay on his back, his bare feet touching the scratchy carpet. He knew he was leaving wet trails in the bedding with his hair dripping everywhere, but he didn’t care. Henry stared at the wall for several long moments before digging through his duffel and taking out his pen and notebook, chewing on the cap thoughtfully. He wrote the date today and logged what he ate. There was nothing else worth writing about, and he kept stopping and starting sentences. How did Kerouac do it? He could barely articulate himself. Maybe he should take drugs. That seemed to work out for him. 

But maybe, maybe he was better off in law school and forgetting Doug’s harebrained scheme. They weren’t teenagers anymore. They couldn’t make money off writing jokes for a magazine, at least not sustainably. The Lampoon had outlived its purpose. Now the real world was beckoning. Henry tossed his pen and notebook aside and pinched the bridge of his nose with his knuckles. He knew himself well enough to be able to tell it was going to be a long night ahead, that sleep would elude him for a little while. 

Only one thing to do then. He folded up his glasses and placed them neatly on the bedside table. Then he got comfortable, spreading his legs out and wrapping his hand around his cock. He was still soft so he pumped himself to an idle rhythm, one arm flung over his face as he let the noise of the TV wash over him: the rhythmic dialogue, even the grate of the laugh track. 

It took a while before his cock filled out, his balls plumping up. He was sweating, biting the inside of his arm to keep from groaning too loud. He recalled the first time he’d touched himself in boarding school, under the covers and so quietly that it almost hurt, wasn’t worth it. He’d rubbed himself on the mattress, his face pressed to his pillows, his thighs and knees burning from the friction, but the pain had been negligible from the all-consuming consuming ache of his cock. He’d wished it was more, someone else’s hand on his dick, feeling the sleek pressure of it, spreading the slick around the leaking head. Across the room, his roommate slept soundly, none the wiser.

It could have been Rick’s hand, strong and rough with callouses. It would feel so good, even his body knew this. Henry shuddered, his toes curling, as his cock jolted at the thought. Rick, who’d touched his elbow lightly as they were hurrying out of the car in the rain. The fantasy was almost enough to get Henry choking in shock, and he let himself go abruptly just as a knock on the door sounded. Once, twice, three times. His cock flopped from his grip; he was close, so close.

“Henry? You still awake in there?”

Henry groaned and wiped his hand on his thigh, shuffling back on his feet and tying his robe more tightly around himself. He was still embarrassingly hard, as if Rick’s voice had made him all the more aroused. He waited a beat and thought about bodies of water. After two minutes, he got up to answer the door.

“Coming!” he groused, pulling it halfway open to shield his lower half.

“Did I wake you?” Rick looked concerned.

Henry gave him a _what do you think, asshole_ look and Rick shrugged, hunching his shoulders. “Shower in my room isn’t working. Was wondering if I could use yours.”

Henry moved out of the way. “Sure, help yourself.”

“Neat,” Rick grinned, and seemed to conjure a towel and basket of toiletries from thin air. He was already wearing the complimentary slippers which Henry still hadn’t found anywhere in his room. “You got the room with a view, huh,” Rick whistled, pulling back the drapes and looking studiously outside. Henry grabbed a pillow to cover his crotch and then padded over to the window to see what Rick was on about. He was right: there certainly was a view, trees and trees and even more trees, bordering a lake nearby that shone under the moon like a newly minted coin. 

Henry hummed noncommittally. Rick glanced at him then, quickly, before snorting out a laugh and shaking his head.

“What?” Henry said. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Rick said. It sounded like a lie. He patted Henry on the back and nudged the bathroom door open with his foot, dumping an armful of bathroom stuff into the sink. Then he used the same foot to shut the door behind him, giving Henry a wry two-fingered salute before the door clicked shut.

Henry heard nothing for a while, not that he was eavesdropping. There was a rustle from the other side ofthe flimsy door, the opening and closing of a medicine cabinet, followed by an emphatic yelp. And then there was the sound of the shower turning on, hitting the tile. The AC rattled steadily in the background meanwhile, freezing droplets of shower water onto Henry’s skin. Henry shivered, glad that his erection had mostly gone away. He combed his hair with his fingers while trying vainly not to imagine Rick in the shower, and he made himself decent and slipped into a pair of pyjamas. There was nothing interesting on TV so he clicked it off and started packing his pipe. He bought a bag of tobacco with him for the trip but it was only a matter of time before he ran out: the bag was already a quarter gone. Henry smoked for a while, enjoying the silence, interruptedfrom time to time by Rick’s loud off-key singing. When Rick finally emerged from the bathroom, he was in a threadbare towel that barely hugged his hips and that threatened to slip off at the slightest gust of wind. 

Henry almost dropped his pipe. Through sheer force of will, he managed to keep his expression neutral and take a slow drag of tobacco. It entered the wrong pipe, so to speak, and he had to thump his chest a few times to clear out his lungs. 

“My clothes are in my room,” Rick said by way of explanation. “I forgot to bring them.”

“Right.” Henry nodded, still coughing.

Rick nodded back. He walked around the bed to get all the way to the door, carrying all his things in one arm. Henry didn’t ogle him but he also wasn’t blind to the broad planes of Rick’s back and how the muscles there shifted every time he moved. Henry crushed on a quarterback once when he was just fifteen, before he knew any better, before he realized what it was, and that boy had been just as big and just as handsome as Rick. Only, Billy Myers didn’t hold a candle to Rick: he was mean and quite stupid, and he didn’t appreciate Henry showing up at all his games so he gave him a split lip. The lip took only two weeks to heal but Henry’s pride never recovered. His parents didn’t give two shits about his predilections but it was clear they thought Henry had it coming. Henry’s father’s advice was for him to man up.

“You’re staring,” Rick pointed out.

“What?”

Henry blinked. He wasn’t staring but Rick looked at him in a way that made Henry doubt himself. Henry rolled his eyes and made to shut the door — except Rick held out his arm to stop him. “Wait.”

“What?”

A beat passed, then another, and then Rick shrugged and said, “Good night.”

“And thanks for letting me use the shower,” he added.

“Sure,” Henry said. “Any time.” Then he shut the door for good.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Breakfast consisted of black coffee and soggy beans on toast.

Henry ate his breakfast alone, contemplating whether or not he should wake Rick. Half an hour later he found him anyway in the downstairs lounge, already wide awake and reading the morning paper. He was dressed in jeans and hiking boots, his flannel shirt stretching a taut line across his chest. When he caught Henry watching him from across the room, he grinned and waved him over, tucking the paper under one arm.

“Sleep well?” Rick asked, climbing to his feet and planting his hands on his hips.

Henry shrugged. “Like a baby,” he said, even though it took him hours to summon real sleep and he lay awake for the better part of the night, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide whether or not there was a tiny almost invisible crack in the plaster. He passed out shortly after dawn, muttering to himself, forgetting to take his eyeglasses off. When he woke, groggy and confused, trying to make sense of his surroundings, he had a brief moment of panic. The urge to call Doug had been strong but not strong enough to propel him to actually do it. Now in the light of the morning and with more coherence, Henry thought he probably should call. The last time they spoke had been over a week ago when Henry was hemming and hawing over Doug’s proposal. Make money writing jokes for a magazine? He’d never hear the end of it from his father. Henry wondered what Doug was doing right now. He’d said something about giving free tennis lessons at his dad’s country club because like Henry he too was waiting. For Henry to make a choice, for their actual lives to begin.

“We should take a look around,” Rick suggested, raising his eyebrows hopefully. 

Henry regarded him with an upturned mouth. He’d never even considered sightseeing. The point of this trip was… well, he wasn’t sure yet, but he knew at some point he’d discover it. 

“I think there’s a museum a few blocks down the road,” Rick continued. “Should be interesting.” He flashed Henry a smile, bumped their shoulders together.Henry almost knocked over a potted fern standing next to him.

He rubbed his shoulder ruefully. It was pure genetics: his shoulders were practically icepicks. In PE, he was always picked last for teams. “You want to look at old paintings,” he said slowly, “and the stuff people left behind centuries ago?”

Now it was Rick’s turn to shrug. “Could be fun. You got anything to do?”

Henry didn’t. Because his conviction was weak, they ended up checking out the museum, amid Henry’s protestations that they should really hit the road before nightfall. But it turned out not to be a waste of time after all, surprise, surprise. 

The town used to be a mining camp during the height of the gold rush, gold wrested from earth and stone and shipped to the big cities for coinage. Now a century later it sat forgotten by history, populated by a few hundred people who never really left. Dahlonega was a sleepy town, where people peered out of their windows to watch you as you were passing through. Nobody new moved in, Henry was guessing. The only way was out.

The museum still had its original furnishings in tact. There was gold in the walls, in the clay and mud used to build the floor, and the curator could only babble about so much about it. Later, Rick bought them sandwiches from a nearby deli and they sat in a pinch of a shade in a wide, empty park. No kids in swings, no mothers pushing their babies in strollers, just green grass and the sway of leaves overhead, the sky so bright it burned blue. 

Henry started pinching the crusts off his sandwich.

“Really, you’re removing the crusts?”

Henry scrunched his face. “I’m not some barbarian. _Of course._ ”

“But the crusts are the best part! They’re full of vitamins, and also they taste good. Don’t you want to be a healthy boy?”

Henry shot him a dirty look. He was blushing; he could feel it in the back of his neck. And because he was pale as the underbelly of a fish, he wouldn’t be able to hide it. “Shut up,” he huffed, “Don’t call me _boy_. I’m older than you.” Two years was still a lot. 

“Could have fooled me,” Rick laughed.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I was just teasing, you. Come on, lighten up.” He bumped their shoulders again, but this time, as they were sitting side by side and cross-legged on the grass, Rick didn’t move away. Henry could feel the warmth of his arm where their skins touched.

“No, I really want to know,” Henry insisted. “What made you say that? Do seem child-like to you? Do I not act my age? Tell me, just how I am a _boy_ and not a man.”

His voice was rising in volume the more worked up he was getting and Rick quickly sobered up, holding his hands out in surrender. “I just mean,” then he trailed off, staring at something in Henry’s face before blinking. “You look young, that’s all.” His voice softened. “I thought you were eighteen or something. Your face—” then he made a vague gesture with his hand and muttered something Henry didn’t quite catch.

Henry decided to drop it and stared coolly ahead. He ate his sandwich in silence, gripping the sides tightly till the filling oozed out of the corners. It was the best BLT he had ever tasted in his life. Rick laughed when he said that. 

“Henry, it’s bacon,” he said, “it tastes the same anywhere.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Henry found a payphone somewhere after Highway 385 in Memphis. 

It was blistering hot, the gravel shimmering under his feet. Henry pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and unbuttoned it halfway down his chest but he still looked like an asshole, standing outside a truck stop, sunglasses tucked in his front pocket. He should have accounted for the weather but he barely owned any t-shirts that showed off his arms. He didn’t tan; he was the type to _stroke_ under long periods spent under the sun. While his peers headed to the beach for spring break, losing their various underclothes in the process, Henry leafed through heavy tomes and smoked his grandfather’s pipe in the relative comfort of the school library, tucked away in a corner where the librarian couldn’t see him.

His mother picked up on the third ring just as Henry caught sight of Rick through the glass window paying for the food and sweet-talking the waitress. Rick had also just paid for gas and was scanning the receipt in his hand, making a face. 

Henry wiped the mouthpiece with the hem of his shirt before answering.“Mom,” he said. “It’s me.” 

“Oh, Henry! How are you? How’s law school, darling?” 

“It doesn’t start till August,” Henry told her. Sometimes she had to be reminded of these things; she often lost track of what day of the week it was. “I’m with a — _friend_ right now. I took dad’s car. We went on a trip together.” 

“Your father did say one of the cars was missing,” his mother mused. “Which one did you take? You know the Maserati is his favourite. He’d go ballistic if you found out you took it without his permission.” 

“Mom,” Henry interrupted her, sighing as she laughed, the sound of it strangely comforting even from miles away. “I took the Buick.”

She laughed again. There was something about laughter that seemed longer on the phone than it was in real life. “Is Doug with you?” she asked.

“He’s not my only friend, mom.”

“Well, as long as you’re having fun,” she said. Now it was Henry’s turn to laugh. He watched Rick again through the glass: he was sipping on coffee, twirling the menu in his hands, glancing around and fidgeting. It was funny, because even after knowing him only for a few short days, Henry felt like he’d known him ever since. He was kind, is the thing. Agreeable almost to a fault. And he always put his hand on the headrest of the driver’s seat whenever Henry was driving. He had a nice laugh, too, the kind that was infectious. Rick could be laughing about anything, or nothing, and the sound would seep into Henry’s veins like a virus.

“I love you,” his mom told him. Henry echoed the sentiment more out of surprise before hanging up and joining Rick for lunch. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

They hit the road again.

Back in the car, warm and exhausted from the food, they watched the scenery unfold on either side of the road, the houses they could see at the distance, their little roofs expelling wisps of smoke, the view of the ocean, unhindered by the trees, the sun hanging low in the peach-colored sky. 

They drove in relative peace until one night when Rick hit the breaks without warning, sending Henry nearly lurching out of the passenger seat and snapping him from his half-sleep. His mouth tasted of lint and it took him several moments to adjust to his surroundings, rubbing the crust from his eyes as he uncoiled himself from the backseat and joined Rick in front of the car. 

It was clear from the commotion that they’ve hit something. Henry had heard a solid thump, then Rick’ loud shout, then the sound of the car door opening and shoes slapping the ground. 

Dark outside now with nothing but moonlight to light the way. The shadows of trees loomed over them like wraiths, rimming the side of the road. The air was cool, passing the back of Henry’s neck as he slipped out of the passenger seat. 

“What happened?” Henry asked, already fearing the worst. Rick reached for Henry’s elbow. The touch startled Henry into looking up at him. His mouth was tipped down at the corners. 

Rick stepped aside from whatever it is was he was crowded around: a young deer, it seemed like, its brown fur spotted white. Henry nodded, and touched it before he could help himself: the body was already cold, which meant it was long dead before he and Rick drove over it. But it didn’t make it any less worse: the deer’s eyes were open but unseeing, glass-like as it reflected the glow of their headlights. 

Rick crouched down and caressed its smooth flank, shaking his head in disbelief. “Sorry about that, little guy, we didn’t see you there,” he said, by way of apology. 

They hauled the body to the side of the road, burying it under a blanket of leaves. 

They didn’t talk about it any more than they should have, Henry ghost-white and shaken as he watched the dark blue of the sky shift above them, the silence between them interrupted from time to time by the car’s low grunt, by Rick shifting gears, by the radio’s intermittent static. It was almost morning again when Henry came to – he hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep with one side of his face pasted to the window. 

He sat up and wiped drool off his cheek. From the driver seat, Rick nodded at him in acknowledgement but didn’t say anything. His hair stood in wild tufts around his head like he’d been passing his fingers through it the entire time. He looked good, still, Henry thought. If Henry were the kind to take a picture, he would have taken one now. Now he understood why Rick was so intent to take pictures of everything. He said something about wanting to distill a memory, capturing moments in amber. He got poetic about photography. Henry wondered if he realized that.

“We’ll be careful next time,” Rick promised him when, not for the first time, he glanced at Henry when he thought Henry wasn’t looking. Henry would have asked him what he meant by this when he remembered last night’s casualty, the deer bathed in headlights, its blood thickening the gravel. He nodded solemnly, smoothing the wrinkles from his shirt, uncurling himself from his slump in the passenger seat. 

Then Rick was suddenly reaching out and his hand on Henry’s knee was a warm and not a wholly unwelcome presence, and Henry let it stay there for a long time till Rick needed to make left turn.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Rick was not a discreet sleeper as Henry was beginning to find. He was loud, he snored; he tossed and turned and scratched himself. He slept with an open mouth and yet Henry couldn’t stop staring at him anyway, at the broad planes of his body, at the dips and curves and strong lines of him, the complete opposite of his own. If he were a self-conscious bastard, Henry would feel inferior; he grew up small and scrawny, and then tall and lanky in his teens after his growth spurt, never really filled out. He’d made peace with the fact he was never going to be conventionally attractive, maybe only in dim lighting. 

Rick slept with his feet sticking out of the blankets which were often haphazardly splayed across his torso, snaking around his hips. Most of the time, they got their own rooms, but some of the time, they had to share one with two singles. Still, Henry counted himself as lucky. He wouldn’t know what to do if he had to sleep in the same bed as Rick. He barely remembered that first night as he passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow. He didn’t think he could handle a repeat where he was fully cognizant of Rick’s presence. It was hard not to notice him; he filled up a room like helium filled up a balloon. 

Henry was getting used to this though: driving through empty roads with only the occasional long-haul truck for company honking in acknowledgement, Rick next to him in the passenger seat, his hand beating a rhythm against his leg. They argued over the music — Henry preferred political radio, Rick had a thing for blues — over every little thing including where to stop for lunch and rest for the night and whether or not they needed a map. Rick kept to the rules for the most part: he didn’t take his shoes off, he kept his shirt on even if it was sweltering, and he split the tab for food and gas. 

They talked sometimes, usually when Rick was driving because Henry liked to concentrate when he was behind the wheel and that meant utter silence. Rick went to a liberal arts college Henry had never even heard of where he changed majors twice before settling for a degree in Computer Science just like his parents wanted. It was safe; it made his parents happy. Then one day he just upped and left and decided to hitchhike all across the country to take some pictures so he could build a portfolio. He wanted to work for LIFE magazine but all he had was an album full of pictures of birds, trees, and the occasional disgruntled stranger. It was some of his best work, sure, Rick said, but it wouldn’t land him his dream job. 

Henry told him about the Lampoon. It was easy to talk to Rick because — well, he wasn’t like Doug who interrupted him from time to time, and liked the sound of his own voice and for his ideas to be echoed back to him in validation. Rick turned down the music when it was Henry’s turn to speak. He laughed at all the appropriate intervals, glanced at him during the pauses. Everything Henry said he considered first before thoughtfully nodding in agreement. The only thing they couldn’t agree on was the sleeping arrangements.

Rick wanted to sleep out under the stars to be one with nature. To have the “full experience” he said, whatever that meant. Thoreau once said that all good things were wild and free but Henry preferred not to be mauled by coyotes in his sleep and he hated nature; he preferred indoor activities like reading and playing checkers. Fuck Thoreau. He only read him for school anyway. 

In Mississippi, the highways were long and went on forever, bordered on each side by stands of trees. Henry tried hard to keep his eyes open but he was squinting miserably and his neck was killing him. He’d slept on it wrong a few days ago and though he knew he shouldn’t be flexing the muscles there, he kept on doing it anyway, hoping the ache would abate over time. It didn’t. It only got worse. Which made him irritable and prone to snapping at Rick.

They managed to findthe only motel that still had a vacancy and of course, there was only one room left, with a queen sized bed. The guy at the front desk gave them a little smirk before handing them the key. Henry swiped it from his grasp and marched up the stairs. It was one of the seedier places: he could hear the muted drone of the television from the next room. He hoped none of their neighbors were planning to have sex tonight: he didn’t think he’d survive if he heard the telltale thump of the bed hitting the wall.

Henry showered first while Rick made himself comfortable in the armchair by the window, slouched low with his legs spread out, fiddling with his camera. Henry spent about fifteen minutes in the shower, scrubbing two days worth of grime off his skin. It wasn’t like he got obsessive about hygiene. He just didn’t like smelling rank and being in a tight cramped space with another person. He dried his hair with a hand towel, till it stood in electric tufts around his head. When he stepped out of the bathroom, Rick was stripped down to the waist, his t-shirt crumpled on the chair he’d just vacated. His bag was on the floor, open to reveal a mess of contents: his other camera, a stack of polaroids held together by a pink rubber band, a harmonica sitting on top of a roll of clothes he thankfully never took out to play. Henry would have murdered him otherwise and dumped his bloodied corpse on the highway.

His neck was still bothering him even after Rick had finished up in the shower. Unlike Henry, his hair was dark and sleek, plastered against his head and neck. It left wet trails on the shoulders of his t-shirt which was as white as his smile when Henry glanced up at him and caught him staring too. “You okay?” he asked, gesturing to Henry’s neck as he hung his towel on a rusty hook behind the door. 

Henry shrugged and regretted the decision immediately. He winced; even that hurt. He tried clicking his neck by rotating his head a bit to one side. 

“You probably shouldn’t do that,” Rick said warily. “You might only make it worse.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “Well,” he said, and dropped his hand. His neck throbbed. “I guess I’ll sleep sitting up like giraffe then.”

Rick didn’t laugh. He crossed the room and rummaged around his bag, upsetting its contents further and then pulling out a tube of hand lotion. It was half empty already and Henry tried not to think about other things Rick might have used it for besides moisturizing his hand. 

“Come here,” Rick beckoned, seating himself at the end of the bed. It wasn’t a big bed but the distance between them felt vast as a tundra, just as dangerous. 

Henry shot him a skeptical glance. Was he proposing to — “What do you want?” he asked, narrowing his eyes speculatively.

Rick snorted, patting the space next to him. “I’m not going to give you an erotic massage, here. I’m only trying to help. Your neck’s obviously bothering you and you keep agitating it by rolling your head around. Look, if you don’t want me touching you, I can understand that. And I won’t, if you tell me not to.”

He held out the tube of hand lotion like an offering of peace. Henry stared at it, at Rick’s hand, the whole of his arm and then his earnest face. Rick’s eyes were intent on his like he was staring into the inky depths of Henry’s soul. Henry blushed, hating Rick in that moment. Did he want to be touched? He knew the answer even well before he verbalized it. He didn’t even have to think about it for a minute. If the question was _Rick_ , the answer would always be yes, god, yes. 

“Fine,” he grumped, and shuffled closer until they were sitting side by side. Rick instructed him to face away, and with some maneuvering around, they finally get into the perfect orientation: Rick with his legs crossed on the bed, Henry in front of him, hands stiff as rocks on his knees. Henry didn’t breathe, and then Rick scooted closer. His hand was warm around Henry’s neck, his thumbs pressing smaller and tighter circles around the aching muscle. The lotion smelled faintly herbal, like rain and green things. Henry closed his eyes. Even through the cotton of his pajama shirt, he felt the solid heft of Rick’s hands, and the sun-warm brilliance of them as they moved across his back and shoulders, kneading the tension out of his body. 

Henry heard him breathe behind him. Rick kept kneading and rubbing and pressing his thumbs into the ball of ache at the base of Henry’s neck. And Henry couldn’t help himself, he moaned in bliss, his head falling back until Rick caught it in his spread palms, chuckling. “Good?”

“Your hands are magic,” Henry mumbled. He still hadn’t opened his eyes.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Rick said. 

“I bet,” Henry sighed.

Rick said nothing in response and just hummed. Henry almost fell asleep to the steady rhythm of his hands and by the time Rick was finished, Henry crawled to his side of the bed and curled himself up into a little ball. His neck hurt a lot less, and he was so drowsy, a syrupy warmth filling up his whole body starting from behind his eyelids. Rick shut off the lights, and Henry heard him move around the room: picking things up, shuffling here and there. And then he was sliding into bed behind Henry, the bed dipping with his weight. It was really just a lumpy mattress, queen-sized, but with two grown men one of whom was built like a ship, it was a tight fit.

Henry felt a hand at his hip. If this had happenedweeks ago, he would have shot out of bed like a rocket. But now he just lay there, his eyes bright in the dark, waiting.

“Can I?” Rick asked. Henry wasn’t sure what he meant. Then Rick hooked an arm around his waist and pulled, and Henry ended up even closer, Rick’s arm curled around his waist, his body pressed up against Henry’s. 

“Sorry,” Rick murmured in Henry’s ear and then his face was hot on the back of Henry’s neck. Henry counted to ten in his head before he willed himself to breathe and relax. He felt Rick’s lips move across his skin, but he wasn’t trying to kiss him or anything; bizarrely, he just seemed intent to spoon. 

Henry bit the inside of his cheek, helpless to do anything but fold his hand around Rick’s forearm and pat it awkwardly. When Rick continued to say nothing, Henry decided not to either. Besides, it was late that it was almost morning again and they’d been driving for hours, arguing over who got to pick the music for longer, and still without a map. Henry shut his eyes and leaned against Rick, listening to the sounds of the night: the din from the room next to theirs, muted thankfully by the wall, the steady rattle of the AC, and then Rick’s breathing behind him, like a lullaby to rock him to sleep. 

Five seconds pass, and then ten, and pretty soon Henry was sound asleep. Then he was dreaming.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Henry dreamt of this:

It was always the same dream. High school, fifteen again, with his face bruised like a rotten fruit behind the bleachers. It was late afternoon. It was always afternoon in these dreams, the sky the color of an egg yolk. He could smell wet grass, couldn’t see past the haze of tears gumming his eyelids shut. And then he heard footsteps. In some dreams, it would be the principal’s, in other’s it was Doug’s. In this dream, it was Rick’s, and when Henry pried his eyes open to really look at him, he saw that it was the same Rick from his driver’s license: his haircut awful, his nose and mouth too big. He was wearing the same school uniform, but because Henry was dreaming, it didn’t feel so out of place.

Rick knelt on the ground, and suddenly he was himself again, the same age Henry knew him, and wearing those goddamned shorts that hiked up his legs. “Need help?” he said, and reached out to grab Henry’s hand. When Rick pulled him up, he was no longer fifteen, and his face didn’t hurt anymore like someone had hit it repeatedly with their fist after Henry had confessed his feelings. Rick was staring at his face, andthen he was cupping it, peering speculatively into his eyes like he was examining Henry for further damage. But that’s where Rick was wrong. The damage was skin-deep, buried in the psyche. Henry may laugh about it now, but he still got the tar kicked out of him when he told a boy he liked him. He could live with the memory, the embarrassment, the shame, though to be fair he could live with a lot of things most people find generally unpleasant.

“It’s okay to be a little lost,” Rick told him before wrapping his arms around Henry and holding him.

“I’m not lost,” Henry huffed, but he was speaking to Rick’s chest and Rick wasn’t listening, just whispering into his ear and hugging him tightly, the way he wished to be hugged when he came home that day after Bill Myer’s big game. 

Henry woke with a start, his heart pounding painfully, his whole body shivering like he had a fever. He didn’t know where he was; that was the thing about dreams. Sleep so deeply and you lose your sense of time that waking like was pulling yourself out of quicksand. 

It took a while before reality came flooding back. Henry felt Rick’s arm tighten around him and tug him back to the bed, a kind of anchor to the present. He couldn’t see him properly in the dark, his face a blur and faraway like a balloon tied to a string. Then Henry blinked a few times and finally came to grips with himself. Rick was snoring softly, his mouth half open, his hair avalanching his face in a strangled mess. Henry squinted at him to make sure he was real before reaching out to touch his hair. He pushed it to the side, away from his eyes so it wasn’t shrouding in his face. Rick barely stirred. Something about the sight of him with his face slack in sleep made Henry feel a strange wave of tenderness that he’d never felt before for anyone. Certainly not for Doug who constantly needed his attention like a petulant child.

The next day, Henry called him. Doug’s mom answered the phone and chatted for a while, asking how Henry he was, before handing it over to an impatient Doug whom Henry could hear in the background complaining loudly. He sounded thrilled to hear from Henry, in any case. Henry could picture him in his living room, probably barefoot and drinking orange juice straight from the jug. “I thought you’d died,” he’d said, laughing. 

“I don’t blame you.”

“So have you made up your mind yet?”

“About law school?”

“Well, yeah, sure, but what about our magazine, huh? It’s been two weeks, Henry. Where are you?”

Henry took a look around. They were at the Blue Pine Campground even though there weren’t any pine trees as far as the eye could see.The sky was pink with low-hanging clouds, the air sharp with the tang of summer and crackling campfires. He could feel sweat condensing at his hairline, beading on his upper lip. 

“Arkansas,” he said, then paused. “Last I checked. I got you a license plate, by the way. Something to put on the credenza.” This was true, though this happened a few days ago in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Henry bought himself an assortment of other knick knacks that he didn’t need from a gift shop in town: sunglasses, blank cassette tapes, and a stetson that Rick had plucked off his own head and placed on Henry’s. The cowboy look didn’t look good on him so he chucked it quickly into the backseat after catching his reflection in the rearview mirror.

“South, huh,” Dougie said, whistling. “Any cute hunnies down there?”

“This is why you’re never going to get a girlfriend, Doug,” Henry sighed.

Doug just laughed again, as if Henry was trying to make a joke. That’s how their friendship worked for the most part: Henry saying something deadpan serious, maybe downright insulting, Doug letting it roll off him like it was nothing. He thought Henry was joking half the time, even when Henry wasn’t. Henry really thought Doug was foolish, narcissistic, self-sabotaging. But he saw similar traits in himself and that’s why they were friends. Birds of a feather and all that. 

“I think I’ll need more time to think about it,” Henry said eventually.

“When you say more time, do you mean two more weeks?” Doug asked hopefully. “I can’t stand my dad’s friends, man. It’s driving me nuts being home again. We should be out there — writing, selling magazines!”

“Peddling them on the sidewalk?”

Henry didn’t have to see Doug to know he was rolling his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Henry sighed. “Anyway, I’ll call you. I’ll send you the license plate.”

“Do you even know my address?”

It was only after Henry hung up that he realized he didn’t.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

At the very least Rick got his wish which was to sleep out under the stars. Henry had never been camping before. He rejected all outdoor activities; he didn’t play sports and he hated nature. His father once took him deer hunting in Westchester but Henry simply never took to it, feeling sorry for the deer, his hands shaking around the hunting rifle, white-tipped. The smell and sight of blood and guts made him vomit and ruin the perfectly expensive shoes his father bought specifically for the occasion. At some point, his father stopped taking him to Westchester which was around the time Henry started getting into _The Lord of The Rings,_ reading all three books, and then going back to reading _The Hobbit,_ playing at being an elf shooting orcs with a bow and arrow. He was a quiet child all throughout middle school, and in high school he was the biggest nerd. He read a lot of books, wrote his own stories. At sixteen, he inherited his grandfather’s pipe and discovered weed. Life was never the same for him again. Then he got accepted into Harvard and met Doug and life changed even more.

Henry exhaled in a quick burst. Above him, the sky loomed large and full of stars. He never noticed it before because of all the smog in the city. Not in New York, not in Cambridge though he was often a nocturnal student, getting dragged to do this and that by Doug. The sky didn’t seem important then when he was running around the city getting high and trying to meet his writing deadlines for the Lampoon. Everything else seemed insignificant in comparison; now he was just realizing it was him that was.

Next to him, Rick yawned.

“Isn’t this nice?” he said dreamily.

Henry swatted at a fly buzzing near his ear. “What?”

“That’s the big dipper over there,” Rick said, one arm tucked behind his head while he traced the sky with his other hand. He had the good sense to pack a sleeping bag with him and was stuffed inside one, casual as anything. Henry didn’t have a sleeping bag but one of the campers who owned an RV was nice enough to lend him theirs. They were in a grassy rest area amid the rest of the campers who drove RVs and came equipped with actual camping gear. All Rick and Henry had for food were gummy bears, bottles of knockoff Pepsi and day-old beef jerky that made Henry’s teeth hurt. And he was still hungry. The fire pit Rick had assembled looked pretty impressive though so it was kind of hard to complain even when he was breathing most of the fumes. 

Around them, the whole of camp was asleep, people snoring in their tents or shuffling around in their RVs. Insects chirped and buzzed in the long dry grass. On the other side of the campgrounds, someone’s dog barked. Someone was playing music too: David Bowie, Henry could tell. He recognized the lyrics.

“I don’t know a lot about stars but I do know that’s not the big dipper,” Henry told Rick with a pointed look in his direction.

“Heh,” Rick chuckled. “Nothing gets past you huh?”

“I’m not an idiot, Rick.”

“Nope,” Rick agreed. “You’re easily _always_ the smartest guy in the room.”

“Because I went to Harvard?” Henry smirked.

“Nah,” Rick laughed, turning on his side to face Henry across the flickering flames. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Most people would be intimidated but I suppose not you.”

“Maybe I’m not like most people,” Rick mused.

“Maybe,” Henry said and then yawned. “Though I’m still not convinced you’re not a serial killer just biding your time before you end me.”

“That’s cute,” Rick said sweetly. “But you have too much faith in me. Someone like you? I wouldn’t even have the patience to wait. I’d have ended you on the spot. Taken your car. Though maybe not your clothes because I’m not a turtleneck-in-July kind of guy.”

“Thanks,” Henry said dryly. 

“Though of course,” Rick continued, because he was on a roll tonight, “I could just do the even more nefarious thing and get you to fall in love with me.”

Henry rolled his eyes. He would blush if he wasn’t oddly charmed. He picked up a nearby pebble and chucked it across the fire where it whizzed past and missed Ricky’s ear by an inch. 

Rick blinked, swallowing visibly. “That could have hit me in the eye and blinded me,” he said in disbelief.

“But it didn’t,” Henry pointed out. “So be grateful.”

Rick shook his head and sank back down in his sleeping bag. Henry tried to get comfortable in his but he wasn’t used to sleeping on hard surfaces, didn’t appreciate the ground poking grooves into his back. He turned his attention to the sky again, rubbed the skin under his eyes. “I should just sleep in the car,” he sighed.

“And miss all this?” Rick gestured around as if _all this_ was a luxurious spa. “Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?”

The worst that could happen was Henry waking up to a big black dog slobbering above him. His scream woke Rick who kicked in his sleep and tipped over a canteen in the dark. He hobbled over to Henry, hopping around with an injured toe. “Fuck!” he hissed. “Are you all right?”

“There was a dog,” Henry said, and felt stupid immediately as he said it. He sat up and pointed across the campgrounds. The dog was already padding away, scared off by Henry’s tinny screaming, his leash dragging across the gravel. Henry buried his face in his hands before groping around for his glasses. They weren’t where he left them by his sleeping bag. When he glanced up he found Rick had them clutched in his hand and he was kneeling on the dirt, concern in his eyes, everywhere in his face. 

“Here,” he said gently, rubbing Henry’s back after handing him his glasses. “You want some water?”

“I’m not eight years old.”

Rick shrugged and picked up the upturned canteen anyway. The water was warm but refreshing. Rick rubbed Henry’s shoulder some more. It helped calm the panicky judder of his heart.

“What are you doing?” Henry said, watching Rick lug his sleeping bag across the grass and dump it next to Henry’s. Then he toed off his shoes and slid inside, zipping himself up half the way, leaning up on his palm to regard Henry through the dark. There was just enough light to make out his features: moon glinting off the surface of his glasses, the strong slope of his nose that was always at odds with how soft his mouth looked. A week’s worth of scruff. Henry wished he could take a picture.

Rick, looking sheepish, dipped his head and rubbed at his neck. “It’s, you know,” he shrugged, “in case the dog comes back.”

Henry was too shaken up to come up with a clever response. He let Rick sleep next to him because it wasn’t like it was the first time. Rick shifted closer until his bag spilled over to Henry’s side. Henry didn’t care. He slept. When he woke, Rick was closer than Henry remembered him being, their shoulders almost touching. Henry became aware of the sleepy chirp of crickets and the sound of wind stirring the trees. The sun was already up and making his chest hot: Henry hated it. 

He was starting to smell and his back hurt and he didn’t want to think about Rick anymore. He’d been in his dreams, and not for the first time. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

In Stillwater, Oklahoma, they stopped for lunch at a place called Eskimo Joe’s where the waitress played nothing but Elvis. After, Rick hunkered down on the sidewalk outside and handed Henry a donut. It was cheery and fresh, with a crisp sugary glaze. It smelled heavenly.

“Here,” Rick said, before stuffing one into his mouth, one bite, and then two, until there was only a fourth of it left. He gestured for Henry to join him. There was a suspicious patch of dirt next to him so Henry ended up sitting a clean two feet away after accepting his offering of dessert.

“Thanks,” Henry said, watching Rick tear into a new donut. There were a couple more in the paper bag in his lap which sat there sweating under the nascent heat. And this, right after a lunch of chicken fried steak and pecan pie. Henry was slightly in awe. 

“Hmmm,” Rick hummed, licking his thumbs noisily.

Henry raised an eyebrow. “Could you please keep it down?”

“What, I’m just merely expressing my enjoyment of these freshly baked donuts!” Rick said innocently, though he did stop with the licking and chucked the rest of the donut he was eating back into the paper bag. He tipped his face up to the sky before making a square with his fingers, a gesture that mimicked taking a picture. When he caught Henry staring at him, Henry quickly looked away, pretending to be invested in the lint he found coating his pants. Above them, a traffic light blinked yellow and red to an empty street. A sudden hush followed that had Henry thinking about how surreal it all was to be sitting on the pavement with someone he barely knew, eating donuts in an unfamiliar place. It was the stuff of fiction, therefore it was going into his book that he promised himself to write, never mind that his notebook was lost somewhere in the depths of his bag buried under musty laundry and wrappers of fast food. 

Henry sniffed himself. He was running out of clean clothes to wear.

“What do you want to see on this trip?” Rick asked, knocking Henry out of his thoughts. “What’s in it for you?”

Henry thought about it for a full minute. _Clarity of mind_ didn’t sound right; neither did _direction_ because he still didn’t want to admit he was lost _._ It was also pathetic, he knew, to expect that kind of catharsis when he was driving without a sense of purpose. It was always the question of where to go next. He wasn’t on this trip to see the world’s largest peanut or to visit the _American Pigeon Museum_. So instead he settled for, “I’m waiting for an epiphany,” which was vague enough and noncommittal but sounded the most true.

Rick stared at him without speaking. “How’s that going for you?” he asked eventually.

“Terribly,” Henry snorted. “I keep waiting for things to happen but it’s been weeks and still there’s nothing.”

Rick made a thoughtful noise. He had confectioner’s sugar powdering his bottom lip. He licked at it absently before leaning back onto his palms as if the pavement wasn’t baking or slowly heating up their asses. The sun was hidden behind clouds but it was only a matter of time before it resurfaced. Henry could feel sweat prickling the back of his neck. Wearing his last clean cardigan was perhaps not the wisest decision he’d made in days but he was never a t-shirt kind of guy: a good portion of his wardrobe consisted solely of dress shirts and cable knit sweaters, much to the amusement of his peers.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be waiting,” Rick said. “Maybe you’re doing it all wrong.You should just do it — whatever it is. Fuck the consequences. You can always get back up if you fail. I mean it’s gonna suck but at least you could say you tried. You know that saying? You can’t get there from here?”

“There is no saying,” Henry said. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Rick didn’t blink. “Don’t I?” he said. And then: “Henry,” he said.Henry immediately turned his head when Rick said his name and was wholly unprepared for Rick kissing him. Dry, brief, lasting as long as the lilting pause at the peak of a sigh, but a kiss all the same. It tasted like sugar. 

Rick caught him at a weird angle, just when Henry’s lips were still parted in stunned silence. Henry felt himself respond reflexively, his eyes closing upon instinct, his breath spooling out of him in a shuddery sigh. Rick’s lips moved. Their glasses pressed together awkwardly. 

When Rick pulled away, he didn’t look at Henry in the eye, just went back to eating his donut and staring up at the sky as if nothing spectacular had just happened.

Above them, storm clouds were fast gathering on the horizon. Henry felt the faintest dusting of sugar on his lips. He tipped his head up when he heard the telltale rumble of thunder.

Rain was coming.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Approximately twenty Bob Dylan songs and the last of clean sweater vests later, Rick said, fighting to keep his eyes open behind the wheel at three in the morning, “Come on then, let’s hear it.”

He meant Henry’s writing. Henry had been scribbling things here and there, notes and snatches of phrases he would overhear on the radio, conversations he overheard at diners and truck stops and motels, some of it Rick’s. He imagined this was how Kerouac did it, embellishing real life with fantasy and myth. Nothing of significance ever really happened, not to Henry who often lived his life by book and pen. And the same applied here: there were high points and low points, like when they almost ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near Holcomb, Kansas, where the Clutter family were killed, but mostly they just drove around and ate a lot of bad food and endured every minor body ache known to man. 

The backseat was a disaster: a mountain of bags and accumulated trash. Bottles of water rolled across the floor, candy wrappers and bits of chips littered the seats, and there were socks hanging over an errant pair of hiking boots. 

Henry’s father was going to kill him when he got his car back, but he could afford to have the leather re-upholstered anyway, and also had three other cars to choose from; Henry wasn’t fussed. His father probably didn’t even know the Maserati was missing.

Rick had patted the car once when they stopped for gas somewhere outside Louisiana, stroking the fenders tenderly and admiring its shiny chrome finish. “You ever name this beauty?” he’d said, like it was a perfectly normal question to ask. 

“People don’t name cars, Rick.”

“Maybe they should,” Rick said. “People name ships don’t they? Like The Queen Mary, or The Lady Annette, or, I don’t know, _Karen._ ”

“I’m sure you made that last one up.”

Rick grinned. He seemed dead set on naming the car so Henry took it upon himself to make the decision. They settled on the name Seymour, after Henry’s paternal uncle who fought in the war but died overdosing on painkillers. He taught Henry how to play blackjack and was often a staple at family dinners though his parents never invited him. Henry thought he was a riot. Uncle Seymour drank too much and smoke like he couldn’t wait to die and he had tar blackening his teeth and the kindest eyes Henry had ever known as a little kid.

“You don’t want a girl’s name?” Rick asked after he’d paid for gas and handed Henry the receipt.

“I don’t like girls,” Henry shrugged. “I like men.”

He didn’t meet Rick’s eyes after that but Rick said nothing about it, either.

Now Rick tapped the steering wheel, yawning and popping a crick in his neck. He looked tired, eyes rimmed red with deep exhaustion. There was a week’s worth of scruff under his chin; he needed to shave. “Read me something,” he said.

“What if you fall asleep behind the wheel?”

“Then you’ll know you’ve failed,” Rick teased him. “I’m kidding. Don’t look at me like that. I read your book once and thought it was funny. And you keep writing in that little notebook of yours; don’t think that I haven’t noticed. I wanna hear a little bit. Just a little passage, please?”

Henry sighed. He leaned over the backseat and rummaged through the mess, needing to unclip his seat belt so he could reach his notebook, his ass sticking up in the air. Rick palmed it for good measure and Henry hit his head on the ceiling, squeaking.

“Fuck!”

“Sorry,” Rick said, biting his lip to keep from smiling. “I thought it was funny.”

Henry glared at him. “Well, it wasn’t.” He smacked him on the arm with his notebook. Rick didn’t stop laughing. “I said I was sorry! Just — it was right there, okay? Right in my face!”

“I’m sorry for the existence of my buttocks.”

“I’m not,” Rick said. He was grinning and probably knew Henry didn’t mind as much as he made it seem like he did.

Henry ignored him and flipped through the pages of his notebook. Then he began to read:

“You know what it is you miss most when you’ve separated from someone you lived with and loved? It’s waking with that warmness beside you. Once you get used to that warmness, it’s a hell of a lonely feeling to wake up without it. Especially in some dollar-a-night hotel room on the skid. A hot water bottle won’t do, and a stranger won’t do. It has to be someone you’re used to, and that you know loves you.”

“Oh that’s good,” Rick said. “Really good.” He blinked. “Doesn’t sound like you though.”

“That’s because I didn’t write it,” Henry snorted. “It’s from _Camino Real._ Tennessee Williams. Have you ever heard of him? I saw a play of it once a couple years ago. The words stuck with me. I had them memorized.”

“They’re beautiful words,” Rick agreed and then hummed. “But I’d like to hear yours.”

Henry wanted to laugh. He rubbed at the skin between his eyes before slipping his glasses on again. “I don’t have anything written down, unfortunately. Nothing that will make sense to me or you or to anyone reading it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rick said. “The point is you wrote them. They’re your words. Your thoughts.”

“But shitty writing can’t turn up a profit.”

“Is that why you’re writing then? To make money?”

“It’s the same reason you take pictures,” Henry told him. “You have a dream, and then you realize you need to eat too.”

Rick let that sink in for a few moments. Henry didn’t want to be mean, but he was tired and exhaustion made him the least cooperative person. And Rick had kissed him but had said nothing about it ever since, had brushed it off like it was just another stop in this road trip to who knew where. Henry didn’t want to be an afterthought, a comma. He wanted to be a full stop; he wanted Rick to kiss him.

The next half hour passed in silence. There was nothing interesting on the radio and Henry was sick at this point of Bob Dylan so he let the silence drag like a heavy uncomfortable thing. 

“What if you never realize your dream,” Henry said, because he couldn’t quite help himself and he had to say something or risk bursting through his skin. “What happens then?”

Rick shrugged though it took him a long time to answer. “Henry,” he sighed, and looked at him, one hand on the wheel. “I went hitchhiking across the country and I’m in a car with a stranger and I still don’t know what I’m doing with myself.”

Henry huffed.

“At least we have each other,” he said.

“Yeah,” Rick laughed, scratching his stubble and shaking his head, peering at him with such earnest eyes, even here in the dark where no one but Henry could see. “You’re not so bad to have around, you know.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

They crossed over to Texas at the same time the light did, and Henry could feel his body responding to wave upon wave of exhaustion; he needed sleep. A faint taste of dust lingered in his mouth but he swallowed against it. They’d elected to keep all the windows open while driving through flat stretches of highway. It was too early for the radio so there was just uninterrupted silence as they drove. 

Henry tried shaking off the heady feeling settling in from being awake too long to experience one day sliding into the next. He rubbed his eyes, glancing at his right to see Rick trying his best to fight off sleep, nodding forward only to jerk back up again.

On the dashboard, a handful of loose change rattled. Henry yawned, contemplating pulling up on the side of the road.

They found a motel a few hours later, checking in after lunch, tired as anything. Their mutual funds were dwindling. Henry didn’t mind sharing a room again for as long as he could sleep in an actual bed and not on the ground. He didn’t mind Rick slumping in next to him, a familiar shape on top of the covers, snoring with an open mouth. Henry washed his face in the bathroom, checked himself for any funky odors, and then changed out of his t-shirt. He would have preferred to sleep in pyjamas but he was too lazy for the whole ritual of preparing himself for bed. He could do that later. Besides, there was only so much mileage he could get out of his pyjamas. He can’t remember the last time they’d been washed. 

The sun bright outside at one in the afternoon, peeking through the slats of the curtains, cutting a sharp line across the carpet. Henry pulled the curtains shut and then padded to bed where Rick was already fast asleep. He didn’t even change out of his t-shirt, just lay there in the same clothes he’d been in in the last two days. Henry slept next to him. “Night Rick,” he said, but Rick didn’t hear him.

When Henry came to after a brief nap, he felt something warm and heavy slid over him. He blinked and saw it was Rick’s arm. He rolled to his side; Rick followed after him, dragging him close. Henry went back to sleep. 

When Henry woke again, Rick was gone, the room still and empty. His stomach was gurgling. Henry sat up, grabbing his glasses from the nightstand and then peering around. Across the room, the bathroom door was slightly ajar. Rick was nowhere to be seen. Henry lay in bed for another half hour before dragging himself to the shower where the water was lukewarm and slippery. He wanted to jerk off and stared at his half-hard cock before feeling ridiculous. It didn’t feel right to do here, when Rick could walk in any time and ask what he was up to. _Rick_ , Henry thought. _Rick, Rick, Rick._ His cock got only harder.

Henry finished showering and dressed quickly. It was early evening, judging from the light outside. Henry sorted his laundry, smelling them and divvying them up into a neat little pile in his bag. There was nothing left to wear. Squatting naked on the carpet, a towel wrapped around his hips, he settled for his least foul-smelling shirt. He winced as he pulled it on. He could feel the edges where sweat had started to crust.

“I bought you food,” Rick said, opening the door without preamble. 

Henry whirled around, his arms caught in the armholes like a headless chicken. He felt Rick pull the hem down over his stomach, freeing him from his misery. “Thanks,” Henry mumbled, then noticed Rick was staring. He had good reason to: Henry’s towel had slipped off and was pooled at his feet like a lazy serpent.

Henry dug his toes into the scratchy carpet so they left soft imprints in the worn material. He wasn’t embarrassed about his own nakedness, just by the fact that he was getting hard the longer Rick stared without saying anything. He kept himself neat as best he could down there, but it’d been too long since he’d last fucked or been fucked by anyone. He wasn’t as pretty as he would have liked. Between babysitting Doug and meeting deadlines for the Lampoon, he’d let himself go a little.

“You don’t have any pants on,” Rick pointed out, an astute observation.

“I just showered,” Henry told him.

“Yeah,” Rick agreed and tossed the sweaty bag of food onto the nightstand. The logo promised the best apple pie this side of the map, and Henry could smell something faintly sweet wafting from the bag.

Then Rick walked over, crossing the distance in two strides until they were standing toe to toe. His breath tasted like fresh beer and cinnamon when he kissed Henry, closing his hand over the small of Henry’s back to pull him closer. Henry went without prompting: it was like someone had flipped a switch in him and he toppled instantly like a deck of cards. His arms circled the breadth of Rick’s shoulders, his mouth opening to receive gentle swipes of Rick’s tongue. He heard a moan; he realized in surprise that it actually came from him. 

When it ended, Henry saw sunspots dancing in his vision from how long he held his breath. He’d never been kissed like that before, Henry thought. Nothing in his entire life was as intimate as that kiss.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, because he had to know. That was his problem in life: everything had to have a reason. Gravity, the earth moving with respect to the sun. People didn’t just do things because they were propelled by an unseen hand. Everyone had their reasons.

“Jesus, Henry,” Rick laughed. “What do you think that means? You seriously cannot be this obtuse about everything.”

“Well, you’re not the most straightforward of people,” Henry said.

“I try to be,” Rick said, a little more seriously. “It’s just that you miss all my cues.”

“What cues?” Henry said. He tried to think back but came up blank; there were no cues whatsoever.

“You know when you’re thinking your face does this thing, you get a little furrow right here—” Rick said, pressing his thumb gently between Henry’s eyebrows.

Henry blinked.

“I kept talking myself out of kissing you,” Rick said, lowering his hand. “Because you scare me shitless and I wasn’t sure if — if you liked me too, you know? It’s pathetic.”

“It _is_ pathetic,” Henry agreed, even though he was the one who was standing there half-naked with a chub, getting manhandled by the most handsome man he knew.

Rick grinned and kissed him again.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The last time Henry had sex he was drunk as an elephant and high on weed. He didn’t remember most of it, chalked it off to another one of those nights that was going to be just a footnote in the story of his life. So he was ill-prepared to be doing this now with Rick, who was peeling off his shirt slowly and running his thumbs down the insides of Henry’s exposed arms as Henry lifted them over his head. He seemed fascinated by everything, even the soft wiry hairs of Henry’s armpits. He dragged his thumbs across the soft shower-damp skin and Henry jerked in response, ticklish, his skin pebbling in goosebumps, his nipples hardening in response.

“ _Ahh_ ,” he gasped, and Rick just smiled, chucking Henry’s shirt across the room so that it hit the wall and rolled to the carpet. Now it was Rick’s turn to take his clothes off. He started with his belt, and it made a thumping noise as it hit the floor. Then his pants came next, then his shirt and socks, so he was just standing there in his tighty whities making Henry’s mouth fill up with drool.

Rick shimmied out of his underwear then beckoned for Henry to crawl forward into his lap. Rick tugged him by the arms and sat him astride his hard dick. It felt good, to feel that slippery friction beneath his ass and balls. Rick was big, thick, almost as thick as the width of Henry’s wrists. Henry tried to imagine what it would feel like to have Rick inside him. It would hurt, surely, but it would also feel good. To surrender, to let Rick have him like an animal. He always did enjoy getting fucked, when he had the luxury of time. He liked it better when he was on his hands and knees.

Rick lurched up and groaned when Henry slid a hand over him. “Fuck,” he breathed, hips spasming as Henry closed his fingers over Rick’s dripping cock.

Henry lifted his head for a moment but it was only so he could lick his palm, his grip spit-slick around the base of Rick’s cock. He set a leisurely pace, watching as Rick’s cock beaded with more precome at the tip. It was red in his grip, angry and monstrous-looking in the delicate circle of his fingers that wouldn’t even fully close around it. God, it was going to feel so good when Rick finally fucked him. Henry just knew, and his cock ached all the more for it.

“I’m going to suck you off now,” Henry said, as if Rick needed the blow-by-blow. He didn’t, but Henry wanted to warn him anyway. It felt sexy, saying it, the electric promise of it making his skin tight all over. He started licking up Rick’s shaft in deliberate stripes until Rick was trembling and beginning to thrust into his mouth with some measure of restraint. His thighs were shaking, Henry could feel them under his hand. Then Henry parted his lips and bent his head and swirled his tongue and Rick let out a shout. 

Rick tasted good, like sweat, like musk and salt. Henry could do this all day; he loved sucking cock, could never get enough of it. He could do this for hours, for someone like Rick, whose laugh was more addicting than nicotine, and whose hands could take apart all of Henry’s defenses faster than Henry could build them. But he was getting ahead of himself now, this was just sex. No need for poetry. It was all about getting off.

Henry wrapped his hand around what he couldn’t fit in his mouth, bobbing his head rhythmically and letting the head of Rick’s cock brush the back of his throat till his eyes swam with tears. Rick sat up a little and began fucking Henry’s mouth, clenching his fingers into Henry’s hair to tug him forward, on and on until Henry finally pulled off. His face was flushed, his eyes were wet, his lips felt swollen from sucking cock. He knew he looked debauched. He didn’t give a fuck. 

Rick looked like he wanted to kiss him but before he could, Henry’s hand was pumping his cock again, his tongue licking the sensitive underside seconds before Rick came in his face. Henry twitched as spurts of come hit his cheek. He flicked some that had gotten on his eyelashes and moaned when Rick tugged him up for a kiss, never mind that Henry’s breath probably tasted and smelled of cock. 

Rick was still breathing hard, his face flushed, his eyes still dark with lust. “Where’d you learn to suck cock like that?” he rasped, his voice pitched low, his fingers ghosting the small of Henry’s back, just shy of Henry’s bare ass.

“Catholic school,” Henry answered, deadpan, though his parents were never strictly Catholic and the private school he went to was co-ed.

Rick shook his head, huffing. Then he said, a soft smile painting his face, “My turn,” and Henry was being flipped onto his stomach without warning, a pillow stuffed under his hips. 

Rick spread Henry’s thighs with his thumbs and like a total cockslut, open they went with hardly any resistance. Henry didn’t even protest the manhandling. He liked being held down by Rick. It would’ve terrified him if he’d still been in school with Kevin Harper as his roommate, but he was twenty-three now, and this was Rick. Rick who was kneading the globes of Henry’s ass and kissing the crease of his thighs. Rick who was pressing the pads of his fingers down to reveal Henry’s little hole, tight stubborn pucker it was.

“Ever got your ass eaten?”

_Good lord_ , Henry thought. He shook his head. He never even thought about it. It wasn’t hygienic, then again neither was putting someone else’s cock in your mouth.

Rick nodded as if that settled it. “You okay with me—”

“Just do it!” Henry shrieked, face getting red now. Rick could be an idiot sometimes. 

Rick nodded once more and then there it was: his mouth over Henry’s hole, kissing it like he would kiss Henry’s mouth, kissing it like it was religion: slow and lazy, with a deft serpentine tongue, until Henry started riding his face for the hot, wet friction. His dick was getting even harder. Who knew Rick was a voracious eater of ass? He didn’t look it. He seemed like the kind of guy who in another world would be a teacher, a father of two, a scientist who said things like, _the true explanation of the near symmetry of nature is this: that god made the laws only nearly symmetrical so that we should not be jealous of his perfection._

Henry knew all about multi-verses, had read enough science fiction to know about them, and Rick, in all his permutations, would be the same old Rick down to the very core: honest, earnest, a little bit naive but then again looks could be deceiving and wasn’t Henry glad for that. He wouldn’t have let Rick drive his father’s car unless some part of him trusted him. That very day he offered to pay for gas, asking to come along, Henry knew he was going to say yes like it was somehow pre-ordained though he never considered himself to be spiritual. And it wasn’t because Henry was lonely, though he was and knew that some part of him would always be. 

Henry let Rick have at him, lapping up what he could even after Henry had already come and deflated like an empty balloon, his mind and body full of cotton, his arms spread above his head.

Rick rolled him onto his back and then leaned over him. His hair slashed across his face, covering his eyes. Henry pushed them back and wanted to kiss him until he remembered where Rick’s mouth had been and where his had been too only moments earlier. 

“You have the cutest ass I’ve ever seen,” Rick told him, so sincere that Henry had to laugh. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

New Mexico, the land of enchantment, hours before dawn: just lines and lines of wheat-colored sand breaking the horizon like waves. Henry thought about the last time he’d been far from home: he went to Harvard because it was either that or NYU or Columbia. And he was sick of New York, how it seeped into his very being, food and drink: growing up in the city that never slept meant you never slept either. Henry was of the notion that his life had to move, move, move for it to mean something. The opposite of that was dying. His father said so. Now that everything was at a standstill though Henry stopped being sure about anything.

The summer was a hot one so Henry was glad they chose to travel the roads after dark. He didn’t feel like sleeping in another motel so he had Doug wire him some money so they could check into somewhere respectable for the next couple of days before they sought out the route to California. The hotel had a laundry service, marble flooring, and a respectably sized pool in the shape of a kidney. The rooms were nothing to write home about but bed was of a better quality than anything Henry had slept in for the last month. 

Rick joined Henry on the bed, and as if pulled by an invisible force, leaned over to kiss him, his arms braced on either side of Henry’s head. Henry’s whole body seemed to relax as his mouth opened under Rick’s. He tasted a little bit like the fruit punch he had a couple hours ago on their last rest stop. Henry never wanted to stop kissing him but at some point they both had to surface for air.

Rick held his face in both hands, watching intently as Henry’s eyes opened, which felt watery in the corners for some reason. Desire drummed under Henry’s skin, like a splinter he couldn’t quite reach, but it was only secondary to the wave of affection washing over his thoughts. He wanted to tell Rick he was grateful he stuck around for so long, despite the petty arguments, the minor disasters, but the hand Rick had slipped under the back of Henry’s shirt distracted him as it scratched skin. 

“Do you have a condom?” Rick breathed, nosing the side of his face. He was grinning softly, his eyelashes brushing Henry’s cheeks each time he blinked. 

“What?” Henry said. 

Rick huffed. “Do you have a condom?” 

“Yes,” Henry said. He patted around for his wallet. He always brought a couple with him because you never knew when you might need one; not that he got lucky all the time. It was Doug who often needed a spare. 

“I keep it like a rabbit’s foot, a sort of good luck charm,” Henry explained. 

“I want you to fuck you,” Rick said, no prefacing the statement whatsoever. His eyes were clear with intent. 

“What?” said Henry stupidly, tongue too thick in his mouth. But he heard him loud and clear and his heart started beating wildly in his chest, a humming bird rhythm that crept all the way up to his throat. 

“I mean, if you want me to,” Rick added, looking like he was about to lose his nerve now as the silence dragged on. 

“I want you to!” Henry said a little too quickly. “Fuck me! Please!” Jesus. Henry cringed at his own over-eagerness. He wanted to die. 

But then Rick slotted their lips together, licking his way into his mouth, and the sound of his laughter was like sugar to a dying man. Henry could almost taste it on his tongue; it was bliss like he’d never known it. “I could do that,” Rick said when he breathed. “I could definitely _definitely_ do that if you want me to.” 

Henry wanted him to.

He let Rick watch him as he undressed. Rick sat on the edge of the bed, jiggling his leg in excitement, his hands shaking in his lap. Henry shucked off his shirt and flung it across the room, then climbed into Rick’s lap and took his face in his hands. They started kissing again, slow and unhurried, and they kept at it until Henry started to roll his hips, circling Rick’s shoulders and neck with his arms. 

Rick rubbed Henry’s hipbones with his thumbs and unclasped the button of his pants. It took some maneuvering before Rick had slid them off him completely. He had to roll Henry onto his back and kneel between his legs, tug the material off his legs like he was reeling fish. Henry was hard in his underwear – blue with racing stripes – that much was obvious, spotting the cotton with precome. 

Rick pulled his own shirt the rest of the way off and then climbed on top of him, bracing himself against the bed. Henry cupped his jaw, startling them both with the sudden tenderness. Then he leaned up on his elbows and licked into Rick’s mouth.

Rick surged forward, goaded by the action, tipping Henry’s head back so he could lick long stripes up his neck. 

Henry’s arms moved, running up Rick’s sides to link around his shoulders. Other parts of him moved too: his legs wrapped around Rick’s waist to pull him close; his fingers carded through Rick’s hair; his nails grazed the side of Rick’s neck, making Rick pant into his skin and shiver. Rick’s kisses tasted tangy like punch; he smelled like a combination of clean sweat and shampoo, the dust that clung to their clothes from driving with the windows down. 

They moved together: kissing, breaking apart, kissing again. Henry was sweating even though the air conditioner in the room was on. His fingers worked furiously to untangle his underwear from his legs and Rick leaned back to watch him toe the damn thing off. 

Despite the bravado, Henry was as nervous as a mouse. He slid onto his stomach, lifted his hips, presenting his ass to Rick as he pulled himself up on his hands and knees. He widened the spread of his thighs till they were open invitingly, giving Rick an unencumbered view of his hole. 

“Put your tongue in there,” Henry said, voice trembling. He threw Rick a look over his shoulder, his eyes hungry, pleading. “Get me wet for you.” 

Rick didn’t have to be told twice. He moved behind Henry, setting his hands on the globes of his ass, kneading them until Henry relaxed. 

Henry moaned, pushing up into his touch. 

Rick lowered his mouth to his hole, swirling his tongue across the furled skin. Henry’s entire body twitched, and he let out a choked noise when Rick spread him open with the pads of his thumbs. 

Rick could probably see it now, Henry thought, from how spread open Henry was: his hole clenching on nothing but air, his greedy-boy eagerness. Rick licked his finger, rubbed the pad of it across the sensitive skin of Henry’s perineum, then towards his hole and _pushed_ , and _pushed_ , until Henry’s body shuddered and gave. He was still tight so Rick licked into him in broad lazy stripes, holding Henry open to let air pucker his flesh. Henry wanted to know what he tasted like. Did he taste good and sweet, or was he a needy, dirty boy? 

He kept panting like a dog whenever Rick opened him up with his tongue, feeling his hole clenching reflexively as his cock stiffened and dripped out precome. 

“You’re amazing,” Rick said, voice muffled as he lapped up his hole, sloppy and wet. He kept Henry open with his thumbs to admire the sheen of spit coating his hole, glistening his thighs. 

“Finger me,” said Henry, need fogging his voice. “Finger me, _come on_.” He never needed anything this desperately in his life. 

Rick rummaged through his bag for the lube, uncapping it with a flick of the thumb. Henry noted how he was almost running low. He didn’t want to ask what Rick was doing carrying a tube of lube around. Frankly, he didn’t want to know. His heart stopped immediately when Rick returned to the bed, when he caught Rick coating his fingers deliberately. 

Rick had big hands. Jesus did he have big hands. 

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, leaning over and covering Henry like a blanket. He teased Henry’s hole with the pad of his middle finger, circling the skin before sinking his finger clean inside. 

Henry’s whole body convulsed. It was _thick_ , slightly uncomfortable, but it was also _good_. Then Rick started moving his finger in an in and out motion and it started feeling even _better_ , Rick prodding that spot inside Henry that made him whimper into the pillows and fist the sheets and fuck himself down on Rick’s hand a few times. His hole closed around the digit as Rick buried it to the knuckle. He felt full, complete. He couldn’t imagine what Rick’s cock would even feel like.

“I like that,” Henry confessed, moving his body back, canting his hips. “It feels, feels  — _good._ Better than when I do it myself.” 

“Yeah?” Rick panted. “You finger yourself?” He sounded awed. “You want another one in there? Need to stretch you out. For my cock. Don’t wanna be hurting you later.” 

That was sweet of him. Henry would kiss him if he could. Instead he sank forward on his face, nodding, angling up his hips. He breathed hard; he could feel the tiny reverberations under his skin. 

“Do it,” he said, and Rick slipped another finger to join the first one, stretching him open in increments, rubbing in tight little circles and thrusting his fingers up so they brushed Henry’s prostate and made his dick hard. 

Henry squeaked, tightened his grip on the sheets. His hole felt good; he’d never had anything in there but three of his fingers but those paled in comparison to what Rick was doing with just the one. It was a greedy thing, just like Henry was, wanting to be filled, practically needing it. Nothing was ever enough. He wanted more than two fingers, but at the same time thought that he could already come from just getting fingered like this, like a needy begging thing splayed on his hands and knees, his ass squeezed and played with. His dick was so stiff he wanted to cry. His knees rubbed against the starchy bed covers. 

“ _Fuck_.” Henry shuddered, the hair on his arms and legs standing on end when Rick pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. 

“Keep going. Just—” The third finger and then the shaking came, a whole body tremor that started from his thighs and made his cock leak faster. He was sweating too, a line of perspiration across his back. He didn’t want to beg but he could feel himself fast approaching the point of no shame.

“You want me to fuck you?” Rick asked, voice low. Henry almost didn’t recognize his voice, his words roughened with lust. Henry wanted to Rick to fuck him so bad the desperation made him dizzy. He wasn’t usually a talker during sex, but he felt like he was out of his mind, barely in control of what was coming out of his mouth. 

“Yeah, put it in me,” Henry gasped, nodding fervently. “I want your cock.” 

“Are you sure—” 

“Fuck me,” said Henry, getting antsy now. “Before I come and change my mind.” 

“How?” Rick asked, and Henry wanted to kick him in the balls for even asking. Rick was still in his jeans, visibly hard through the material. He eased his fingers free and Henry winced, nearly collapsing onto his front. 

Henry glanced at him from beneath his eyelashes, frustrated and pleading.

“How do you want it?” Rick asked again. 

Henry moaned, rubbing his cock across the sheets.

“You wanna fuck me like this, Rick?” he asked, turning the tables on him. “Or do you want me to ride your cock?” 

Rick swallowed. 

Henry was in over his head. He wanted both; he wanted everything: He was a mess, a destructive mess and it was only a matter of time before Rick realized that and left. In the end, he had Henry lay on his back, splay himself open so Rick could see his hungry hole, pink and flushed from a fresh finger fucking. 

Rick kissed him again, there, because he couldn’t seem to be able to help himself, tasting musk and the salt of Henry’s sweat. Henry didn’t care.

Rick kicked off his jeans, his underwear, slipping on the condom and pinching the tip to unroll it over his hard cock. Rick squeezed himself a few times, watching as Henry flexed his toes while he kept himself spread wide. Henry was palming himself with one hand while the other kept his cheeks parted. Rick knelt between his open legs, poising the head of his cock against Henry’s opening. 

Henry licked his lips. “I’m ready,” he said, though his voice sounded suddenly small. 

Rick nodded, braced himself on the bed, and pushed his hips forward. 

Henry’s body resisted upon impulse – Henry tensed against Rick’s chest – but Rick put a hand on his hip to calm him and he relaxed incrementally. He pressed a kiss to Henry’s forehead, which was flushed with sweat, hot despite the temperature in the room. He wasn’t even halfway in yet and Henry was already whimpering, eyes closed tight, fingernails welting Rick’s skin. 

_It hurt._ Jesus did it fucking hurt. Rick was big, and it was like being split open from the inside.

Henry could hear his pulse in his ears, a steady drumming between his eyes. He tilted his head, met Rick’s mouth in an uncoordinated kiss. Their noses pressed together, eyeglasses knocking askew. 

“Don’t move just yet,” Henry whispered, glasses fogging up with condensation. “I need a minute.” 

Then he hugged Rick and rested his forehead against Rick’s shoulder. Rick waited, breathing soft and slow and patient. Finally, Henry kissed the side of his neck and told him to move. Rick inched forward again, keeping his pace steady, watching Henry’s face for signs of pain. His eyes were wet, but he kept waiting for Henry to prompt him until, with a groan, he pressed all the way in, his balls slapping Henry’s ass. 

It felt so good Henry thought he would go cross-eyed. He took Rick’s face between his palms, kissing him from his forehead to his open mouth. 

“Tell me how good it is,” Rick panted. “Tell me.” 

Henry nodded his head, mute, breath hitching as Rick pulled out again only to bury himself deep. He was so deep Henry could feel him in the back of his throat, the flicker of pain turning into relief whenever Rick bottomed out. 

Rick took Henry’s moans as his cue to start thrusting, groaning each time his cock slide home. It was perfect. Henry’s head fell back, rolling across the pillows as Rick rocked into him in deep, even thrusts. Henry started to tremble, reaching between his legs to fondle his balls. 

“Fuck,” he said. “ _Fuck, fuck, fuck_.” 

“That good?” 

“Go harder,” Henry hissed. 

Rick obliged, pulling Henry’s legs apart till he was completely spread, his big hands around the delicate arches of Henry’s feet. Henry’s hole swallowed Rick’s cock, stretching to accommodate every thrust with hardly the resistance. He never knew Rick had it him. At first glance nobody could’ve suspected a big bashful guy like him was capable of porn star-levels of fucking. He had a big dick and actually knew what to do with it, driving Henry crazy like he was just a live wire of nerves, susceptible to every tiny touch.

Henry’s mouth fell open, his body arching up. He could do this all day, loving every second of Rick fucking him in the ass as Henry just lay there and took it: every stroke and every pummel, till Henry was wholly surrendered and utterly his, a body made for fucking.

The mattress started to squeak. A blush crept up Henry’s chest, spreading to his neck, face, and ears. His thighs were spread so wide they seemed to be doing the begging for him. He could feel himself teeter on the brink of orgasm. His dick was drooling all over his chest; his nipples equally hard and needing tending. 

Rick kept his grip tight on Henry’s ankles as he started fucking him hard and fast, hard and fast like he knew Henry needed it. But how did Rick know? Maybe they were meant to meet like this, at the crossroads of their lives, so they could have the best, hardest fuck of their lives. Maybe it was symmetry: the universe working without their knowing, throwing them together just to see what would happen. Maybe Henry would never know. It didn’t matter anyhow. What mattered more was this: their bodies moving together like liquid, every sound swallowed by the tender press of their mouths.

“ _Yes, yes – oh god –”_

“You like it like that? Like getting fucked deep?” 

Rick twisted his hips, shoved forward, burying himself as deep as he could go, not moving until he heard Henry’s answering cry. Then he changed his pace to something slower, every thrust starting from the tip of his cock and ending at the root. 

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Henry babbled, grabbing the headboard behind him for traction. He was wrecked, absolutely wrecked, his face and chest sweating, his knuckles white-tipped from gripping the headboard too hard. They reached over at the same time, to pump Henry’s cock, so hard now, his balls heavy with the need to come. 

Rick thrust once, twice, short and pounding, and Henry came on the third hard thrust, letting out a strangled noise that he was sure the entire floor could hear. His hole clenched around Rick’s cock, gripping him like a glove. 

Rick kissed him through the aftershocks of his orgasm, licking into his mouth, rocking his hips frantically till he came too seconds later, his face pushed into Henry’s neck as he clutched at him hard like a lifeline. Henry’s legs sank down on the bed afterwards and Rick pulled slowly out of him, sliding off the condom and tying one end, chucking it at a plastic bin and missing by a few feet. 

Henry grunted, watching it hit the wall and descend the floor. He was so content to just lie under Rick’s body, that he felt himself falling asleep. Henry let Rick rest between his open knees and skim his fingers across sides of his arms. 

Then there were hands touching his face, tracing the corners of his lips. And there it was again: the smell of Rick’s hair.

“Was it good?” Rick mumbled sleepily, kissing his bottom lip till Henry absently kissed back.

“Yeah, Rick,” Henry said, pushing Rick’s hair out of his eyes. He sniffed out a laugh. “Trust me: it was really _really_ good.”

  

 

* * *

 

 

The road to California.

They couldn’t afford to stay longer than two days at the hotel so they checked out before they were charged for overstaying. 

It was a fun two days though: Rick stuffed himself full at the free breakfast and dinner buffet and lounged by the pool in board shorts, drinking complementary beer. Henry joined him whenever he could, dressed in the hotel bathrobe, as he paged through the half-empty pages of his notebook. There were kids splashing around in the pool while their parents looked on in mild concern. Somewhere, someone shrieked in happiness. Henry smiled, hearing that. 

Later, they fucked in the bathroom, with Rick fingering Henry while he was hoisted over the bathroom sink, his legs spread wide, his head repeatedly hitting the mirror behind it. Rick almost slipped a few times on the tile as Henry held onto him for dear life, a new combination of aroused and terrified. Then it was time to leave: the bed half-denuded, the mini-bar all but emptied, the tubes of shampoo and liquid soap pocketed for future use, even the complementary shower cap. Henry wanted to take a pillowcase as a kind of fuck-you to the man, but decided against it. He wasn’t a thief. His parents raised him well. 

Then halfway to Phoenix, in the twilight hours, Rick turned to Henry and said, “Fuck California. You know where I’ve always wanted to go?”

Four days later, they were wandering inside an empty church in Mexico, candles lighting their faces as they slunk towards the pews, their footsteps loud in the strange stillness. The smell of rain heavy outside, and Henry could hear the steady patter of it on the roof. 

“So here we are,” Henry said. “Where are we?” 

Rick pushed his glasses up his nose and shrugged. They finally caved and brought a map but kept having to stop now and again to check whether they were headed in the right direction. They almost got into a bar fight in Nevada City, California, though this had more to do with Henry insulting every person in the bar after someone had called him a bad word. It was a good thing Rick had fast reflexes and could hold his own in a fight, hauling Henry out of the fray before either of them got really hurt. They quickly found somewhere to cool off that wasn’t filled with townies, eating ice cream under the shade and watching the slow trickle of traffic on the highway.

Later they’d begin their long trek back to the car, walking in the dark between the glimmering fireflies. Much later they would be driving back east, joining the highway again until they reached a halfway point and had to go their separate ways. Henry tried not to think about it: the road ahead, the future, or anything that wasn’t the here and now.Because life could be full of surf and sun today, but when Rick left it would be hard again.

“I could live here,” Henry said, though he didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“In a church?” Rick said in disbelief, though his eyes were smiling.

“No, just — right here, like _this_ ,” Henry said, and bumped the side of his knee against Rick’s. He didn’t need to explain. Rick already knew what he meant. 

Rick bumped back and then turned his gaze up ahead where a massive cross loomed over them in quiet vengeance. Above them, overhead, were a fresco of angels reaching out for the heavens, some on big fluffy clouds and strumming harps. 

They were in the middle pew so nobody saw them. Nobody saw Rick sliding his hand over Henry’s and squeezing; nobody saw him kissing Henry, pulling back just as people started shuffling in through the church doors for evening mass. Nobody saw Henry’s answering smile and him squeezing Rick’s hand, back, tugging on the string of beads ribbing Rick’s wrist — a gaudy souvenir from a gift shop they’d pulled up in front of to ask for directions.

In El Paso, on the drive back, Rick took out his camera to take a picture of Henry. 

It was shaky: Henry had been half asleep while Rick took it, waking to the _clack clack clack_ and whir of Rick’s camera. The camera spat out a polaroid — an embarrassing picture of Henry with his hair sticking up everywhere and drool drying on his cheek, his glasses sliding halfway down the bridge of his nose — which Rick then promptly placed on the dashboard where the sun would leach all its color in the days to come. 

He’d miss Rick when he was gone, his deep slow laugh and his hogging of the bed and his annoying way of taking every single picture of everything; he’d miss Rick’s everything. If Henry could distill this moment, he would, bottling it up like a memory he could play over and over again like images on a zoetrope, until the edges have all but blurred with time and faded from remembrance. Henry was never a sentimental person but this went beyond that; this, this was sentiment, a real thing. 

But time was winding down and Doug was waiting. So was the rest of Henry’s life, except it was hard now to picture Rick’s absence from it. He wondered if it were the same for Rick and what would happen if he let this go on, forever: the road like a white ribbon touching the sky, and maybe if they tried hard enough they would live to see the end of it, together. Maybe.

They drove further east.

And as the sun rose over them the color of a bruise, Henry thought that he was exactly where he was supposed to be: the heat crazy-making, the wind whipping his hair, the desert flickering in and out of sight like matchstick flame. Right here, right now. 

_Have faith_ , the sun seemed to say. _Have faith, have faith._


End file.
